


Temperance, pǝʇɹǝʌuI

by Felle



Series: Persona 5, pǝʇɹǝʌuI [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Genderbending, Genderswap, Teacher-Student Relationship, The First Three Chapters Are Chaste The Fourth Is...Not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:49:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle
Summary: Kurusu wasn't sure what to expect when her friends had her ring up the glorified callboy service—but it certainly wasn't her perpetually-exhausted homeroom teacher done up as a butler. Nor was she expecting to fall into a charged dance of mutual secret-keeping. Genderswapped Temperance confidant with a romantic bent.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is part of a larger AU I'm working on where several of the characters either have their genders or roles swapped, here's a quick rundown of some of the changes: I've genderswapped Akira/Ren/Joker (her name is Kurusu Akane here), Morgana, Makoto, Futaba (still named 双葉, but rendered as _Souyou_ here), Kamoshida, Kawakami (his given name being _Saburou_ here), and the warden twins (named Henry and William here). Ryuji and Ann have their roles (model/delinquent) and arcana swapped, and Shiho and Mishima have their roles in the story swapped. Other than that, we're basically following the game/confidant as it happens normally. Enjoy!

“Wait…are high schoolers even allowed to use this kind of service?”

Shiho tapped one thoughtful finger to her lips while Ann grimaced and Akane pinched the bridge of her nose. “Now? You think of that _now_ , Suzui- _san_?” Akane asked.

“Well, I just remembered that you have a record, and—”

Akane bit down on her thumb and glowered. A fine time for her of all people to have forgotten that, after spreading it around the school in the first place. Shiho shrank under her stare and backed up to the sliding glass door leading out to the balcony. Ann’s look of discomfort became one of concern, and she fussed with her hair until Akane was certain the dye would start coming off on her fingers. “Yeah, that’s a good point,” she said quietly, with a fleeting glance toward the door to the hall. “You don’t want to get sent to juvenile hall over something stupid like this.”

“I don’t want to get sent to juvenile hall over anything!”

Ann might have been seen as a delinquent like her, but she didn’t have a record. It wasn’t her head on the chopping block for something as minor as an administrative infraction. Akane prowled around the empty apartment’s front room, debating the wisdom of simply leaving when it had been her phone number they had called the butler service from. Somewhere down the hall, she could hear the smart _clack_ of footsteps growing closer. Well. Two hearts changed and a few people rescued from endless abuse, it had been a good run. The footsteps stopped on the other side of the door, and there was a quick, smart knock on the frame.

“Good evening, I’m from Victoire’s butler service,” a man’s pleasant voice said.

Shiho clutched her stomach and groaned. “I don’t feel so good…sorry, I’ll see you after!”

She opened the balcony door and ducked out into the night. “Yeah, we’ll leave it to you!” Ann said, and disappeared with Shiho. The door slid shut, and Akane wished she could have pulled her naginata out of the Metaverse then and there.

“Traitors!” she hissed. “Damn you both!”

“The door’s unlocked, may I come in…?”

Akane shivered and turned away from the door, suddenly aware that she was the only one left, meeting a man she didn’t know. She knew she could take care of herself, but losing the numerical advantage didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The front door slid open, and in the sliding glass door to the balcony Akane could see a tall, slender-framed man in a suit take a step inside.

“Thank you very much for electing to use our service, Mistress,” he said through a deep bow. Akane’s brow knitted up behind her glasses. His voice almost sounded familiar, but it wasn’t as if she had a great deal of voices from other health delivery boys to compare it to. He sounded young, though not as young as her. “My name is Bryce, and as your butler I will do my utmost to soothe your tired spirit and suffuse your body with renewing energy!”

“Yeah…nice to meet you…”

She fixed her glasses before shoving her hands into her pockets, devoting her thoughts to devising all kinds of torturous punishments for Ann on their next excursion into Mementos. Bryce, or whatever his name really was, cocked his head and took another step forward, hands tucked behind his back. “We offer a number of services, including meal preparation, laundry and cleaning, turndowns for any beds, massages, and looking after pets, among other things.”

The unease with which he finished his routine made Akane think the _other things_ were offered only reluctantly, though she did give herself over to wondering what they might have been for a moment as he looked around the empty room. “Cool,” Akane said, at a loss for anything else.

“Ah, Mistress, please forgive my impetuousness, but you sound very young,” he said, leaning to his side slightly to get a better look at her face. A blush rose up on her cheeks. “Are you perhaps…in high school?”

That hadn’t taken long. Akane thought she could pass for an adult in street clothes, but apparently it didn’t take much to find her out. Still, maybe she could still salvage this and slink away without getting in trouble. “No, I’m a mom.”

He chuckled under his breath at her obvious deception and took a step back. “I think it might be wise to hold off on any of those _additional_ services until you’re a bit older then, Mistress.”

“Really, I’m sure my two idiot daughters are around here somewhere,” Akane said, and rapped sharply on the sliding glass door. There was a quick _yelp_ , and then the sound of breaking earthenware.

“Ow, my foot!”

“Shit! Run for it, Shi- _san_!”

Akane rolled her eyes. They were on a balcony, there wasn’t anywhere to run except back into the apartment, unless they jumped to the ground below…no, they weren’t that stupid, she thought. A pair of muffled _whumps_ and pained sounds a moment later proved her wrong, and she almost would have been impressed if it hadn’t meant they were abandoning her. Usually it was only adults who did that.

Her butler crossed the room in a few quick steps until he was at the balcony door. “Sakamoto- _kun_? Suzui- _kun_?”

“Hey, how did you know…?”

The familiarity of the voice suddenly clicked. Akane took a step back and ran through every curse she knew in her head. At the door, it seemed as if ‘Bryce’ was doing much the same. His head hit the glass with a groan. “Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have taken this call.”

“Hold on—Kawakami- _sensei_?”

Akane could have laughed from the ridiculousness of it. The odds had to be astronomical, and yet, there really weren’t any other possibilities. He turned in place, eyes downcast. A great deal of product had brought his usually-frizzy hair under control, but otherwise, it was the same tired eyes and downcast expression. The suit was a fair bit more flattering than his usual school clothes, though, and the late hour had given him a bit of stubble along his chin and jawline that she certainly didn’t mind. “Yes, it’s me…your homeroom teacher…”

Kawakami Saburou folded his arms over his chest and stared at the floor, but did spare a fleeting glance at her to confirm his suspicions. “Kurusu- _kun_. Somehow I’m less than surprised.”

“Well, I’m not. The school lets you moonlight as a callboy?”

“ _Butler_ ,” he said quickly. “And what I do outside of school hours is my business, thank you very much. Who put you up to this? Chouno- _sensei_? She’s always breathing down my neck about one thing or another.”

“Why would she put me up to anything?” Akane asked. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have tried to pull this if I knew it was going to be you showing up.”

His shoulders hunched, making him appear smaller even though he was easily half a head taller than her. He narrowed his eyes, but didn’t seem to find any deception in her voice—because there wasn’t any, for once. “Yeah. I guess this really doesn’t look any better for you. The school wouldn’t like me working here, and they wouldn’t like you calling up this sort of service. Look, why don’t we both forget this ever happened? I’ll call in and say that you cancelled before I arrived, so you won’t have to pay anything. Can’t believe I got caught by one of my students…”

Akane was still too shocked to say much, to ask him to stick around and maybe explain what was going on. Kawakami shook his head, his face a gorgeous shade of scarlet, and took his leave. She made to follow him and got as far as the front door, but he was already hurrying down the walkway and over to the stairs. Akane sighed and left the other way, trusting Ann to come back and see to locking up the empty apartment. Morgana was where she’d been left, playing with a hundred-yen coin beside a parked scooter.

“Hey, how’d it go?” she asked, handing back the coin between her teeth when Akane knelt down for it. “Was he cute? Not cuter than Ryuji- _dono_ , right?”

“Let’s just go home.”

Morgana took Akane’s silence on the train back to Yongen as license to talk, and described in minute detail the birds she’d been listening to and other cats she’d seen while they were apart. Akane scratched idly at her head while she turned over this new bit of information in her mind. She’d seen the flyer Ann had pulled from her building’s mailbox, it was little more than a trussed-up escort service—that was the whole reason for calling it. But her homeroom teacher…no wonder he always looked so tired. She frowned.

Sakura was still in the shop when she returned, cleaning his coffee press behind the counter. He glanced up and scowled. “You said you’d help me since the dishwasher isn’t fixed yet, where’ve you been? Did the police detain you or something?”

“Relax, _oji_ - _san_ , I kept my hooliganism to an acceptable minimum,” Akane said, not breaking stride as she made for the stairs. “Had an errand to run in Shibuya. Let me set my bag down and I’ll do the dishes.”

It was later than Akane would have liked by the time she finished, and her fingers looked like prunes from the dishwater. She hung up her apron and trudged upstairs, where Morgana was curled up in her bed. “Late,” she mumbled, cracking one eye as Akane started pulling off her clothes. “You should sleep.”

“You’d think you were getting paid with how much you insist on me going to bed every night. Where’s my phone?”

“Over there. I tried to plug it into the charger, but paws aren’t dexterous enough. It was buzzing before. Ann’s ringtone. How come she wasn’t with you earlier when you left?”

“Cowardice,” Akane muttered. She flopped down on her bed, stretched out her back, and properly connected the charger before looking through her messages.

_SukebAnn [22:39]: Sorry about ditching you back there…did everything work out?_

_Kurusu Akane [23:02]: Yes, no thanks to you two. We might have to work out some kind of Phantom Thieves tribunal for desertion, Skull._

_SukebAnn [23:03]: I’m really sorry! We’ll make it up to you, me and Shi-_ san _. Was the guy cute, at least?_

Akane tapped on her phone’s frame for a moment. If he didn’t look exhausted all the time, she wouldn’t have hesitated to call Kawakami good-looking, maybe cute. And she hadn’t disliked the way that suit was hugging his body, or the stubble that had started coming in. Soft, vaguely jolting tingles radiated through her chest. But it wasn’t as if she could make any of that known, not with the way the school was still reeling from the mess with Kamoshida and Mishima’s suicide attempt.

_Kurusu Akane [23:05]: I guess you’ll never know, will you?_

With that, she turned off her phone’s ringer and set it down with her glasses before turning over and staring out the window. She curled the drawstring of her sleeping pants around her finger. _Yeah…he was cute_.

⁂

“Is it just me, or was homeroom really weird today?” Ryuji asked as he turned around in his seat with his bento. “Language class, too. Seemed like Kawakami- _sensei_ had all the color drained from his face or something. Do you think he’s sick?”

Akane opened her own bento and stared down at the food inside. Even though she’d been the one to make it that morning, seeing the leftover curry, like every other day, did nothing to excite her for lunch. She tucked some loose hair behind her shoulder and picked up her chopsticks. “Maybe he saw a phantom.”

Ryuji was understating the unease they had started the day with, if Akane was being honest. Kawakami usually threw a question or two her way when he thought she wasn’t paying attention, but today it was as if he had forgotten her side of the room altogether. Akane hadn’t even tried to needle him about it, occupied with taking notes and following along with the lesson as she was, but he still looked pale as a sheet whenever she glanced up to check the blackboard. “You should pack fish once in a while,” Morgana said when Akane laid a bit of curry in her desk for her. “Fatty tuna!”

“You can go clear out a floor in Mementos and give me the money you find if you want me to buy fatty tuna, you little gourmet. That stuff’s expensive.”

Still, she couldn’t fault Morgana for wanting a little more variety in their diet. Sakura made some damn good food, but his menu didn’t exactly have a wide range. Akane stood up and rolled her shoulders. “I’m going to see what they have left in the school store, maybe get a drink. No wandering paws.”

She was climbing the stairs as she returned empty-handed, uninterested in the store’s offerings, when she glanced down the hall leading to the practical building. Akane paused, then dipped behind a corner next to the faculty office. Kawakami seemed to be getting the business from their English teacher, staring at the ground and not making an effort to get away. He looked so tired, Akane thought, that he might not have had the energy to do so. She rounded the corner.

“Look, I have to prepare for my next class, so if you’ll excuse me,” Kawakami said before he coughed into his sleeve.

Chouno clicked her heel against the floor and refused to budge. “We’re not done here! You barely make it to faculty meetings, you duck out of school as soon as classes end—we’re all under scrutiny after that business with Ms. Kamoshida, we can’t keep covering for you!”

“Ah, excuse me, Ms. Chouno,” Akane said, fighting every reflex in her body in order to use a western honorific, “I was hoping I could borrow Kawakami- _sensei_ for a moment, I had another question for him.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Akane wouldn’t claim English as her favorite subject, or even put it in the top five, but she was competent enough that her presence didn’t immediately inspire dismissal. “ _Another_ question, Ms. Kurusu?”

“Oh, right!” Kawakami’s chuckle didn’t sound very sincere to Akane. Chouno looked back at him. “Kurusu- _kun_ ’s questions are quite complicated. The interplay of history and language and all that. So I take some time at night to help her, and I learn a bit from my research as well.”

“So you’re offering extra tutoring to students…?”

Akane nodded along with Kawakami. Chouno clapped her fist into her open hand with a newly brightened look on her face. “ _Fab-u-lous_! So dedicated, even when you look exhausted! I’m sorry for casting aspersions on you, Mr. Kawakami. I’ll let you two get back to it.”

The fatigue from mentally shifting gears to understand the English she peppered through her speech was well worth it for the sight of her leaving in high spirits. Akane waited until she had disappeared into the faculty room, then turned to Kawakami. “The interplay of history and language?”

He shrugged. “I studied it in college, it was the first thing that came to mind. Anyway, thanks. She’s always nipping at my heels for something or other, I wasn’t able to shake her off this time.”

“Well, you were just standing there and taking it like an M, I had to do _something_ ,” Akane said, and he grimaced at her frankness. Kawakami started to move past her to return to his office, but she stepped in front of him. “I did have one question, _sensei_. Or is it ‘Bryce’ right now?”

His neck and ears went a lovely shade of red, and Akane followed when he ducked down the empty section of hallway to the practical building. With the only door out locked during classes, no one would come by and overhear them. “You’re a handful, do you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Akane said bitterly. His expression softened at that, but he didn’t press her. Kawakami leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms while Akane took a step closer, intruding into his space. “Relax, I’m not going to tell anyone. Like you said, it’d come back down on me, too. But I think I can get an explanation, if nothing else.”

“Not now, I actually do need to prepare for my next class. I’m working tonight, we can talk if you call up and request me. There’s a fee, though.”

“Oh?” Akane leaned forward and pressed her hand to the wall beside his shoulder, earning her a deeply perturbed look. “I hope you’re going to make it worth my while, if I’m paying.”

“Are you…trying to kabedon me?” he asked, incredulous. “Seriously?”

“That depends, is it working?”

“Word of advice—if you want to try that, you really need to do it with someone shorter than you,” Kawakami said, and brushed her arm aside so he could leave. “And you probably shouldn’t keep calling that company on your own phone, if your probation officer decides to look through it. Once could be written off as a mistake or harmless fun, but two times…you get the idea. Don’t be late for your next class.”

Akane trailed after him at a polite distance, watching before he went into the faculty office. The suits he wore to school were clean, but of a very plain cut that didn’t show off how slender he actually was. His butler getup, though, with the tucked waist and the slim cut of the slacks…she almost bumped into the door frame as she returned to her classroom.

“Nothing good, huh?” Ryuji asked as Akane sat down and went back to her curry. Morgana’s continued complaints about a lack of variety went unaddressed while Akane thought about how she was going to clear out Leblanc early that night. She absently put another bit of curry in her desk. “It’s crazy how fast they run out of things here, I wish they would get another oven or something.”

“Yeah, nothing good right now.” Akane tapped the ends of her chopsticks against her bento and shrugged. “There might be something interesting later, though.”

⁂

“Come on, why won’t you tell me what you’re doing? I’m the team strategist!”

“Then go figure out a strategy for spending the next hour around the backstreets,” Akane said, and put Morgana out on the doorstep. Her defiant meows went unheeded, and she eventually trotted off in a huff while Akane returned to her preferred booth to get some reading in before her appointment. As hungry as she was, she doubted whether she could keep anything down until this was through. Something about inviting a man over for a one-on-one chat kept her from relaxing, even if she knew she didn’t have to worry about her safety. How stupid, she thought. They had been beating shadows into submission not three days prior, and her homeroom teacher was an herbivore if she had ever met one. Still, Akane found herself reading the same line in her book six times before there was a smart, quick knock at the door. She let out a long breath and hopped up to undo the latch.

“Wait—this is a coffee shop!” Kawakami said as Akane stepped back to let him in. He hadn’t shaved, though Akane was hardly about to complain about the stubble on his chin, and he was in the same well-cut suit as the night before with a pair of clean white gloves. A perverse part of her wanted to reach up and muss out the product keeping his hair under control, though she restrained herself. “I knew the address looked weird. How do you keep finding empty places like this?”

“I didn’t find it, I live here. My room’s in the attic, it’s quiet enough to talk up there. Back this way.”

The stairs seemed louder than usual as Akane led the way up to her little loft, still cluttered with trinkets she’d been given that she hadn’t yet bothered to organize. Kawakami crossed the room with her and leaned against her desk, brushing some scrap pieces of metal aside with his hand. “Oh, so you really do live up here. Kind of dusty.”

“Why do you think I need a butler?”

“Very funny,” he said dryly. Akane sat on the side of her bed and started taking her hair out of its braid. More than once she thought she felt his gaze linger on her before moving on. “Why don’t you live with Sakura- _san_ in his house…?”

“He’s only getting paid to put me up while I’m in Tokyo, there’s no rule about comfort. Now it’s my turn for questions.” Akane turned and leveled her gaze at her teacher. He swallowed, hard. “So what’s with the whole butler thing, really? Because I think Chouno- _sensei_ is right for once, you always look like death warmed over in school. Why run yourself ragged?”

Kawakami shrugged and stepped over to the couch, where he all but collapsed. “I have bills, and a teacher’s salary doesn’t lend itself to a glamorous lifestyle. This job might not be the most dignified, but it pays. Sorry that there’s no great mystery to it.”

Akane nodded once while she shrugged off her jacket and he looked pointedly at the ceiling. It stung a bit to know he was lying, but she _had_ cornered him about it, so his grasping at least made sense. “Got it.”

“You know, I really can’t figure you out, Kurusu- _kun_ ,” he said while she went to hang up her jacket. He kept staring at the ceiling, but that might have been because he was resting his head on the back of the couch. “At first I thought you were just some troublemaker, but then I see that you’re getting top marks in everything other than English. You didn’t bother showing up until lunch on your first day, then haven’t missed a minute of class after that.”

Thankfully Igor and the twins had since gotten a better grasp of her schedule and obligations, Akane thought as she took a chair and turned it to face the couch. “Like I said, the trains were messed up that morning.”

“Uh-huh. And then you stood up to Kamoshida- _sensei_ after that awful thing with Mishima- _kun_ , so I know you must have a pretty decent sense of justice…but you still went ahead and called this service. You know full well what it was too, from your little _callboy_ comment. So what is the truth?”

Kawakami pinched the bridge of his nose and looked over at her. Akane rolled her lip between her teeth. He looked so vulnerable, so tired, like a beaten dog turned out on the street in the rain. Some part of her wanted to give him a hug and tell him it would be all right, but she knew she would be rebuffed if she tried. “I’m a complicated person.”

“I guess you are, Kurusu- _kun_. Ah, sorry, but I have to leave for another shift in half an hour, so would you mind if I closed my eyes…for a few minutes…?”

He was out almost before he’d finished speaking, with only the gentle rise and fall of his chest to indicate that he was still alive. “Yeah,” she said softly. Akane set her phone timer for thirty minutes and put it on the table beside him. She got up as quietly as she could and looked through her pile of clothes. “Go ahead and rest, _sensei_.”

The confused sound following the chime of her phone upstairs told Akane that Kawakami was awake half an hour later, slowly orienting to his unfamiliar surroundings as he shook off the haze of sleep. She closed her book and sipped her tea as he came hurrying down the stairs, squeezing his shoulder with one hand and smoothing out his jacket with the other. “Oh, there you are,” he said.

“Here I am. I hope you didn’t hurt your neck sleeping like that. Do you have to hurry off now? This is decaf, but I made some low-caffeine tea for you, too. And your money, plus the request fee. I’ve never spent five thousand yen to have someone else take a nap before, but I guess it can’t be helped.”

He paused in place as he was crossing the dining room floor, as if unsure of what to make of her generosity, but then took the cup she indicated on the table and sipped at it while discreetly palming the envelope waiting for him. “ _Oji_ - _san_ doesn’t keep much tea around here, but I think the leaves I found were still good.”

“It’s delicious, thank you. Listen, I know I shouldn’t even be considering this, but…it’d really help me out if you could request me some more,” Kawakami said, and rubbed nervously at the back of his neck. Akane raised an eyebrow. “I’m a little ways past the ideal age for this kind of work, so I really don’t get requested that much. At all, really. My boss sounded stupefied when he told me that you had called for me earlier. But I need the money, so…yeah.”

Akane could already feel how sore her backside would be from getting kicked back to juvenile hall if Sakura or her probation officer got wind of her patronizing a delivery health service, but she kept a carefully neutral expression as she adjusted one strap of her tank top. Kawakami became very interested in the wall, which made her pout. _Herbivore_ , she thought. “All right, I’ll keep requesting you.”

“Really? Thank you!”

He bowed, a little too wildly if the way his head came within a hair’s breadth of the table was any indication. Akane bit back a giggle, then waited for him to straighten up. “I do actually have chores and things for you to do, though,” she said, and he nodded. “You’re cute when you nap, but it’s not like I can pay for that all the time.”

Akane knew she shouldn’t have delighted in the way he blushed at her comment, but she did anyway. “Of—of course. You’ll get a better idea of what I can do next time. And I know you’re going out on a limb to do this for me, so…how about I let you slack off in class from time to time? As long as you keep your grades up, that is.”

“Deal. Give me your phone, I’ll put my number in it and you can let me know the days when you’re working.”

She stood and followed him to the door once she was finished with his phone and opened it for him, only to have Morgana saunter in with a string of expletives she had learned from Ann. “Oh, is this your cat?” Kawakami asked, and knelt down to offer his hand for her to sniff. “I feed some of the strays in my neighborhood. I wish I was home often enough to actually take care of one full-time.”

“Yeah, that’s Morgana. She likes to wander.”

“I do not, you just put me out like the trash! And what are you doing, inviting a guy back to your room at night? You weren’t…wait, Kawakami- _sensei_? What in the world are you doing here?”

“So friendly! Most of the cats I feed aren’t very talkative,” Kawakami said as he scratched between Morgana’s ears. He seemed to remember himself after a moment, and stood up to take a step over the threshold. The late spring air was thick with humidity, and Akane could feel the havoc it would wreak with her loose hair if she left the door open much longer. “Ah, well. Thank you very much for using our service, and please feel free to call again at any time so that we may satisfy your every desire.”

Akane felt her throat go dry when he straightened up and she saw the way his expression had changed. Going into his employee routine had put an edge on his voice, and she found that she didn’t mind it one bit. The light over the door diminished the appearance of the dark circles under his eyes, giving them an almost predatory glint to go with the hints of a smirk at the corners of his mouth. She had to draw on every well of self-control she knew of, and several she didn’t, to keep from doing something untoward. As it was, she only pressed her chest out slightly and showed a bit of teeth with her grin.

“Oh, I’ll be doing that… _sensei_.”

Kawakami’s smirk faltered, but only just. He took a step back with a nod before turning on his heel and heading toward the station at the end of the alley. Akane found that she didn’t mind the way her hair began to frizz as she stood outside, watching him leave.


	2. Chapter 2

Morgana had made no secret of her displeasure at being put out on the street, and had refused to leave for a second time the next night after Sakura went home. Akane, in turn, had been less than forthcoming about answering her questions. The incessant meowing from the counter was finally starting to wear on her nerves, though, and set her book down after making no progress on the page. “All right, all right! Are you ever off?”

“You weren’t saying anything!”

“Most people take that as a cue to stop asking questions,” Akane said, turning in the booth so she could drape her arms over the side and back. “Or does that not translate to cat?”

“I’m not a cat! Now what are you doing with your teacher?”

Akane let her head pitch back and bump against the shelving that ran the length of the dining area. What _was_ she doing with him? He had asked for her patronage, if reluctantly, and she was obliging him. That was all. It was a deal, like the ones she’d already struck with her teammates and people around Tokyo. He got help with his bills, and she got to slack off in class. If there was eye candy to gorge herself on in the process, well…so much the better. Not that Morgana had to know that. She shrugged. “It turns out that he’s got a night job as a domestic, and I have chores that need doing. Mutually beneficial arrangement, that’s all.”

“Then why did you jump through hoops to try and keep it from me last night?”

She was spared having to wander down that line of thought by a knock on the door. Akane hopped up on tingling legs and ignored Morgana’s continued inquiries as she unlatched the door and let Kawakami in. He had gone with a different suit for the evening, but it was thankfully of the same cut as the other one, tucked in at the waist and snug around his arms and legs. Kawakami bowed and then smoothed some hair that had fallen out of place.

“Good evening, Mistress. How may I be of service?”

“How indeed…well, come inside, it’s hot out there and I want to shut the door.”

Morgana’s angry mewling subsided when Kawakami started petting her, and he smiled at the way she purred and rolled onto her side. “Don’t pet me, I’m not…a cat…oh, that feels good.”

“She’s quite the conversationalist, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she’s a regular chatterbox. I was going to do the dishes because I know where they have to go, could you start with wiping down the counter and the tables?”

“Certainly,” Kawakami said, and picked up the cleaning supplies she pointed out near the coffee machine. “A French press?”

Akane looked over at the contraption at the end of the counter. “Is that what it’s called? I never touch the thing now. Sakura- _han_ tried explaining it a few times, but I prefer tea. And he said my coffee tasted like sludge after the one time I tried using it, so I’m not going to risk befouling his precious machine.”

“Just needs a light touch, that’s all. Do you mind if I make a pot? I, ah…I could use the caffeine,” he said with an embarrassed grin. Akane worried her tongue against the inside of her cheek as she studied his smile. Cute. She caught herself after a moment—a long moment—and waved a dismissive hand toward the press.

“Knock yourself out, Bryce. There are a few open bags of Arabica back there.”

She busied herself with scrubbing dried curry off the plates in the sink while Kawakami set up the coffee machine. So much for helping with her chores. Much as she wanted to, though, Akane couldn’t bring herself to nudge him along, not when his shoulders looked slumped and he was making such careful adjustments to the brewing equipment. “You know how to work that thing?”

“Sure,” Kawakami said. “My parents have one, it basically got me through college. Most of the time I have to go with the instant stuff now, but making it from scratch is so much better.”

Akane set the plates in the drying rack and watched him go through the process Sakura had tried showing her, to no avail. Kawakami picked up two small cups from beneath the counter and poured out the coffee, bringing his hand up so it would aerate on the way down. The shop smelled like it was open again, with the coffee’s slightly bitter scent hitting parts of her nose that were well worn by now. Akane dried her hands and watched him take a whiff, sip lightly, and finally nod in approval. He finished his cup and offered the other to her. “Would you like to try it, Mistress?”

“If you insist,” Akane said. It smelled better than her botched attempts, at least. Morgana would tan her hide if she was up all night from the caffeine, so she took only a small sip. Or, she meant to only take a small sip. The brew tasted much like Sakura’s did, subtle and with only a light punch of bitterness. Her cup was empty before she knew it, damn the mewling at she would get later. “I might need you to show me how to do that…”

“Maybe another night. I’ve already stalled too long on this cleaning.” Kawakami took the cup back from her, his gloved fingers brushing lightly over hers as he did, and Akane did a poor job of convincing herself that the kick in her chest was from the caffeine. “You can go back to what you were doing, if you’d like. I’ll put the dishes away once they’ve dried.”

“Right, right.”

Akane stepped around the counter to return to her booth and the book she’d been looking over. He made for a nice kind of background noise, she thought, unlike the barbs she and Sakura would trade or the questions about anything and everything that Morgana would throw at her. By contrast, Kawakami’s soft humming allowed her to focus—or it would have, if she hadn’t been hopped up on coffee and stealing glances at him every few minutes. Morgana watched disapprovingly from her favorite chair.

“It doesn’t look like you’re getting much studying done,” Kawakami said as he finished wiping down the other tables. He had half a smile on his lips, but Akane couldn’t tell if he was still doing his act or not.

“Well, I _am_ full of caffeine now, makes it difficult to sit still. And I like watching you do my chores in a fancy suit. How come the stuff you wear to school doesn’t fit this well? You obviously know how to make it work.”

His smile dropped. “This isn’t my suit, it’s the job’s,” he said with a vague sweep of his hand over the ensemble. One of his gloves dragged down over the lapels. “The ones I wear to school used to fit better when I still had time to eat dinner every night. And honestly, this one is a little small around the middle for me.”

“That’s my favorite part.”

Akane could swear she saw his face go red as he turned away to cough.

Sooner than she would have expected, Kawakami had the counter and remaining tables clean and the dishes stacked neatly in their places. Akane frowned. Her chores for the night were finished and she actually had some energy left, but…her time was just about up, she saw with a look at her phone. She would have tossed a bit more money his way to keep him around for another hour, but he had mentioned subsequent appointments while cleaning. Akane would have preferred he stay with her, all the same.

“There we go, all nice and neat,” he said as he closed the cabinet that held the dishes. “Was there anything else you needed me to do, Mistress?”

 _Mistress_. It wasn’t as much of a power trip to be called that as she first thought. She would have liked if he used her name. Akane shook her head. “No, that was it, thank you. I’ll go and get the money.”

She stole upstairs, almost tripping near the top from her jitters, and plucked the envelope she’d set aside earlier from the pile of miscellany Morgana had built in her unused cat bed. “I made a deal with him, didn’t I…?”

Akane took the tarot deck she’d woken up with after a nighttime trip to the Velvet Room and tucked it into her jacket pocket before heading back downstairs, to see that Kawakami had loosened his tie and was tempting Morgana with a treat from the bag behind the counter. “Don’t think this bribe means I don’t have my eye on you,” she said with a full mouth. “You had better not try anything weird with Akane!”

“You’re pretty social! I wonder what cats would say if we could understand them.”

“Probably nothing that interesting,” Akane said, and slipped the money across the counter. “One more thing before you go?”

“Of course, Mistress.”

Akane took her deck out of its box and held it out. “Cut this three times with your right hand.”

He raised an eyebrow, but did as she asked, and Akane set the cards aside to walk him out. “Let me know the next time you’re working, my laundry’s been piling up.”

“Probably not until the weekend, unless I get more hours,” Kawakami said. He tucked his face into his sleeve to cough, and Akane took a step back. “Sorry, allergies. Thank you very much for using our service. Don’t be late to class on Monday, Kurusu- _kun_.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Morgana was pawing to no avail at the drawer where her treats were kept when Akane went back inside, and then had the gall to act innocent when she realized she was being watched. “What? I wasn’t doing anything. What are those cards for?”

“They help me keep track of things,” Akane said as they went upstairs. She took down the Kujikawa Rise idol poster on her wall to show Morgana the corkboard underneath, where she had pinned up several other cards from the deck with slips of paper inscribed with names. “The personas I can subjugate and fuse each belong to one of the major arcana from this deck. Why this whole mess is wrapped up in some ancient French thing, I’ll probably never know, but it is. And the people around here that I end up making deals with also correspond with one of the arcana. The stronger those bonds become, the stronger the personas in that arcana get.”

Morgana shook her head and laid down at the edge of her table. “So, who’s what? I can’t read your handwriting.”

Akane pointed to each of the cards in turn. “I’m the Fool—no comments—and you’re the Magician. Yusuke is the Empress, Sakura- _han_ is the Hierophant.”

“What about those two blank spaces there?” Morgana asked, pointing with her paw.

“The High Priestess and the Emperor. I haven’t figured out who they are yet. Anyway, Ryuji is the Lovers, Ann is the Chariot, Henry and William in the Velvet Room are Strength, Takemi- _sensei_ is Death, and Suzui- _san_ is the Moon. And Kawakami- _sensei_ is…”

She turned over the topmost card on her deck. “Temperance. The path to moderation and balance. And it’s inverted, like the others were.”

“That’s it? You know it’s right, just like that?” Morgana asked as Akane pinned the card into the fourteenth space. “Because he doesn’t seem like a very good candidate for that, if he’s working so many jobs that he can’t do his main one all that well.”

“They all start out like that.” Akane pointed to the Chariot while she tore off a slip of paper from her notebook and wrote _Kawakami Saburou – Temperance_ on it. “Like Ann. She was still messed up over how things with the softball team ended. Once we got things settled with her old teammates and she was able to move on from what happened, the card was right-side up the next time I looked at it. I’m helping them as much as they’re helping me.”

Morgana groaned and turned over while Akane replaced the poster. “This is all too complicated for me.”

“It’s all right, I don’t think cats were meant to understand it.”

“I’m not a cat!”

Akane put her hands up in conciliation and shrugged off her school jacket. “Well, it’s not something you have to worry about. Your card just kind of does its own thing as we clear out the palaces. Probably because we’re together so much to begin with,” she said, and reached over to pet her. Morgana huffed and turned away, then gave in after a moment and allowed Akane to scratch between her ears. “I don’t really understand all of it, either…but making friends seems to help, so I’ll go with that until it stops working. Now go on and get comfortable, it’s going to be hot tonight.”

⁂

It had been a less than restful week for Akane. Her student council president had gone from blackmailing them over Ann’s inability to keep her voice down, to getting himself kidnapped, to awakening his own persona in yet another palace. After that, leader or not, Akane had been outvoted about letting him join the Phantom Thieves. And scouting out the bank had left her so exhausted on Friday and Saturday that she could only look regretfully at Kawakami’s texts as she collapsed on her bed, utterly spent. Morgana trying to take her phone before she could respond hadn’t helped her mood, either.

“Come on, don’t spend all Sunday lazing around in bed!” Morgana said, kneading her front paws on one of Akane’s thighs. “I want to go out and do stuff! Get up!”

“Get up, go to sleep, get up, go to sleep…I have my own circadian rhythm, there’s no need for you to try and do its job.” Akane sat up slowly, winced a bit from the heat, and reached around for her phone. “Oh, it _is_ late. There’ll probably be customers downstairs.”

She put on the nightclothes she had discarded over the course of the evening and grabbed an outfit and her toiletries from her shelves before stumbling down to the café. Only Sakura was there, and he had at least enough prudence to not comment on her dishabille before she dipped into the restroom. “Couldn’t even stay somewhere with a proper bath,” Akane muttered as she pinned up her hair and assembled the portable shower stall she’d bought.

Once she was reasonably presentable and ready to make the most of the rest of her day, Akane balled up her towel under her arm and saw Morgana waiting in her purse on the stairs, having dragged it down tread by tread. “Yeah, I’ll take you out in a minute. Hey, _oji_ - _san_ , you have to either get a better hot water heater or throw me a few yen for the baths next door, I almost froze to death halfway through—”

Akane lost her train of thought as she turned around and saw that they had customers. Just one customer, in truth, but she was too preoccupied with him to notice the empty room besides. Kawakami was sitting at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee, with Sakura nowhere in sight. Her teacher cocked his head, and Akane grasped for something to say. She tossed her towel onto the stairs and out of sight, earning an angry yowl from the cat it landed on. “W-what are you doing here?”

He shrugged and smiled. “I live nearby, and I have the day off. I thought I’d see how good the coffee is when it’s made by an expert. Are you just getting up?”

“Don’t you start on me, too. And where is the expert?”

“Sakura- _san_ went to the store for some ingredients he was running low on,” Kawakami said. He took another sip of his coffee. “But he did say that you would be, how did he put it, ‘happy to watch the store where she lives rent-free until I get back’.”

“Of course he did. And it’s only rent-free because he’d have to provide some basic amenities if I was actually paying him.” Still, Akane went behind the counter and donned her apron to see what needed doing. “Would you like any curry, Bryce?”

The panicked look and flush of red around his ears was so cute, Akane thought, but he recovered far too quickly and glowered at her instead. She found she didn’t mind that very much, either. “I’m off the clock, and you didn’t request me this past week anyway,” he said tersely, resting his head in one hand while he set his cup down.

“I meant to. But I was otherwise occupied, sorry. Next week.”

Kawakami dismissed her apology with a wave of his hand. “It’s not a problem. I really shouldn’t be relying on one of my students for my bills, anyway. Although it’s not like you have a hundred thousand yen laying around that I could borrow, so I guess I really should keep asking since you’re willing to request me at all.”

He went back to his drink, and Akane frowned. The dark bags under his eyes, the tired expression even with the coffee, the weight he’d lost—he was running himself ragged. And worse, he was flippant about it. Not exactly the picture of temperance. She took out her wallet under the counter and pulled the ten thousand-yen notes until she had one hundred thousand in her hand. Akane wasn’t as amused the second time she nearly made him choke on his drink and fall into a coughing fit when she slid it across the counter. “How—what—”

“I went to the bank yesterday.”

His shoulders somehow slumped further as he looked, disbelieving, at the money she’d put in front of him. “You must have one hell of a part-time job,” Kawakami said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“How do you know I’m not just fabulously wealthy and looking for a boy toy?”

“Because you live in the attic of a coffee shop in Yongen,” he retorted. “Don’t get me wrong, I like this neighborhood, but it’s not exactly high-rent.”

Akane leaned back against the bean shelf and crossed her arms. “How long have you had that one in the holster?”

“A while. And as much as I shouldn’t even dignify the second part of your question,” Kawakami said as his voice dropped to a mumble, “I would think you’d have no trouble finding someone closer to your own age for that, not the guy who just had his hours cut because he doesn’t look like a shonen protagonist like his coworkers.”

The self-deprecating laugh made Akane think he was trying to play it off, but it obviously troubled him beyond the financial implications. Even if men weren’t supposed to care as much about those things, his pride had been wounded. “Well, that’s pretty fucked,” Akane said, and Kawakami’s face colored again at her language. “You seem perfectly good at the job, and it’s not like you don’t carry off the suit well. I mean, what are you, thirty-three at the most?”

“I’m twenty-nine,” he said, affronted. “Look at me, needing a student to stoke my ego. But…thanks. And take your money back, I don’t want to owe it. You’d probably never get repaid with the way things are going, anyway.”

“Well, why don’t you sell me something?”

He raised an eyebrow, and Akane leaned forward on the counter until he could get an eyeful of her cleavage if his gaze slipped down. It didn’t. “There’s nothing I have worth nearly that much,” Kawakami said, moving back in his seat.

“Not even an evening out?” Akane asked. “A nice dinner, maybe a movie, and then we come back here with a bottle of sake and see where the night takes us? I won’t tell anyone if you won’t…”

She was glad that most of her weight was on her elbows, because her legs felt ready to give out. There was no telling where this was going to go, but she certainly had an idea of where she wanted it to end up, propriety be damned. Kawakami sighed and shook his head. “You can hire me, Kurusu- _kun_. But you can’t buy me. Now stop this, it’s unbecoming.” Akane frowned as she straightened up and clutched at her shirt collar, suddenly aware of how open it was. Kawakami slid her money back across the counter. “You’re only sixteen, and my student besides. I don’t care how much money I lose out on, you’re not getting anything off the special menu from me. Dishes, laundry, cleaning, cooking, even massages, I’ll do all of that. But the boyfriend experience is _not_ on the table, understand?”

Akane nodded. She wondered exactly how much blood had rushed to her face, because it felt like most of it was there. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice, one she barely recognized as her own. “I’m sorry.”

Kawakami’s expression softened, and he ran one hand through his hair, only to make it even messier than usual. “Don’t worry about it, I know you’re only trying to get a rise out of me.”

Still a bad liar. But she appreciated his attempt to help her save face. Akane chuckled weakly and scratched the back of her neck. “Yeah. Pretty good, right?”

“Very effective,” he said, and went back to his coffee.

An unpleasant thought occurred to Akane, one she didn’t want very much to vocalize. She grabbed a rag and started cleaning some coffee stains on the counter that had built up over the week. “Ah, your hours that were cut, that wasn’t because I didn’t request you this past week, was it?” Akane asked.

“No, no. Those were afternoon hours, and there were just too many people working during that block. Evenings are still fine, same days and times as before.” Kawakami stood up, covered his mouth to cough, and put a few hundred yen on the counter. “I have some errands I should run while I have the chance, please tell Sakura- _san_ the coffee was delicious. I’ll see you in class?”

“Yeah. Oh—right.” Akane curtsied with the sides of her apron, much as it galled her. “Thank you very much for allowing us to serve you, please come back soon.”

“The mandatory customer service spiel stinks, doesn’t it? But I think I’ll have to, I didn’t get to try that curry. Have a good day, Kurusu- _kun_.”

“ _Sensei_? Do you think you could use my given name? Just once?”

Kawakami frowned and pursed his lips. “The last student I did that for…it didn’t turn out well.”

She watched him leave, hating the sound of the bell chiming over the door that signified his departure. Morgana came prowling out from behind the stairs, her fur still moist from the towel she had clawed her way out from under. “You really made an ass out of yourself there, didn’t you?”

“What’s that? Your fur’s all matted and you want a nice, long bath?”

Morgana was surprisingly quick when she wanted to be, Akane found as she chased her through the backstreets of Yongen. She finally managed to corner her recalcitrant cat outside of the medical clinic, and only avoided countless scratches by promising not to try and bathe her. “Come on, we’re going to Shibuya now, I promised Yusuke I’d go to the planetarium with her. Have to go get my purse. Oh, but I guess we should wait for _oji_ - _san_ to get back from the store. And you really do need a bath, I just don’t have the time or patience right now.”

“Maybe a cat would need a bath, but I’m only stuck in this body by mere contrivance,” Morgana said as she trotted back to Leblanc alongside Akane. She curled up in her favorite cubby behind the counter while Akane started cleaning the dishes that had piled up in the sink. “Hey, what do you think he meant by that before?” Morgana asked. “About something not turning out well?”

Akane set a dish on the drying rack and drummed her fingers along the edge of the sink. Kawakami didn’t seem like the type to be familiar with _any_ of his students aside from her, and theirs was an exceedingly unusual circumstance. That there was some other student with whom he had once been comfortable like that pricked a jealous nerve in her. She rinsed the cup he’d used and tried to dispel that. _It didn’t turn out well_ , whatever that meant. Was that why he kept them all at a distance? “Who knows,” Akane said, then took out her phone while they were still alone and opened the Navigator to add in a whisper, “Kawakami Saburou.”

“ _No candidates found_.”

She hadn’t thought she would stumble over a palace like that, but it was still nice to know that there wasn’t another one looming around the corner. Akane hovered over the bookmarks, the bank and Mementos and that cruiser she was still torn on divulging to the others, then slipped her phone back into her pocket.

⁂

Being able to pull things out of the Metaverse came with the unfortunate side effect of fatigue and injuries carrying over as well. Akane was nearly dragging herself back to Leblanc after dealing with Kaneshiro, wincing and groaning with every step from the station. Morgana was already asleep, dozing in her bag as Akane weighed the merits of collapsing in front of the clinic nearby. No, the sun had already set, Takemi would have gone home for the day. She would just have to hope nothing was broken and that she wouldn’t wake up in too much pain the next morning.

“You look like hell,” Sakura said when she trudged in.

Her thoughts were too scattered to come up with a retort, and she was only just able to remember her new nickname for him. “They can’t all be great days, Soji- _san_. I’ll do the dishes tomorrow.”

Akane was vaguely aware of him grabbing his jacket and leaving for the night before she climbed her stairs on all fours, then collapsing at the top, with her bed in sight yet maddeningly out of reach. There was no way in any world, real or cognitive, that she was going to spend the night on the floor. She carefully set her bag down and grabbed at her shelves to try and pick herself up, only to have her pile of dirty clothes come down on top of her.

She wanted to cry, and allowed herself a few tears before clamping down on it. Akane looked up and realized that it was all of her clothes, and she would have nothing to wear other than her uniform come the morning. And that could use a wash as well, if she was being honest with herself. The damage to her thief outfit didn’t carry over, thankfully, but it certainly smelled like she had been fighting a gigantic metal pig.

Fifteen torturous minutes later, she had changed into her nightclothes, gathered up everything to be washed, and gotten Morgana into her bed so she could dig out the things they had found while going through the palace for the last time. “Oh, that _fucking_ piggy bank,” Akane said under her breath as she took the stairs back down one at a time, hamper in tow. She got as far as the end of the counter before she had to pause to catch her breath. The bright yellow pay phone was in the same spot as always, but the handset seemed so much heavier as she held it up to work the dial. “He does laundry, right?”

Akane was enjoying the feeling of the cool metal of the washing machine lid on her cheek when Kawakami poked his head into the laundromat. “Ah, there you are—what’s the matter? You look like you’ve been through the ringer,” he said, hurrying over to the end of the row of machines where she was sitting. His work suit still looked nice, but Akane couldn’t bring herself to enjoy it quite as much now that she knew it was too small for him.

“You know how it is, the troublemaking delinquent life isn’t easy. But I still have to do laundry like everyone else, so…”

She had to resist swearing up a storm as she stood and pointed toward her hamper. “That stuff on the top should probably go in a separate machine, it’s pretty dirty. Well, you’re the expert, you can decide. Here’s the money for it all, just bring it all back once it’s done drying. Hope you don’t mind sorting through my delicates.”

“After this job? It’d take more than a few bras and panties to faze me,” Kawakami said, and popped the lid on one of the machines. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I’m fine. Going to bed.”

“Well, at least let me walk you back to the shop. No one’s going to steal your clothes.”

Akane wasn’t in a mood to argue. She shuffled over to the café with Kawakami at her side, mumbled out her thanks when he held the door open for her, and tried not to cry at the prospect of climbing the stairs again.

Her plans for sleep, unfortunately, went awry before she had a chance to lose consciousness. Everyone wanted to have a group message session right then, and Ann pinged her the first few times she tried to ignore her buzzing phone. One ominous picture of her naginata—none of them had to know that it was only sharp in the cognitive world—finally kept them from trying to involve her in the conversation, but sleep still remained out of reach. Some other Metaverse user…that was what Kaneshiro’s shadow had said after they’d beaten him into submission. Of course, whether there was any truth to it or he was only trying to save himself was debatable. It was a matter she could think about another time. The twins and their boss would probably have something to say about it, whenever they next decided to drag her to the Velvet Room in the middle of the night. Which wouldn’t be any time soon if she kept staring at the ceiling, so very aware of every last pain in her body.

The streetlight outside her window buzzed unmercifully as she tried, in vain, to fall asleep.

In the shop below, the bell over the door chimed. “Laundry’s done,” she heard Kawakami say before his footfalls reached the stairs. “Should I leave it down here, or up there with you? I guess it shouldn’t stay in the restaurant part…are you awake? Or at least decent?”

Akane was curled into a ball and only aware in the barest terms of his presence when he walked into her room. Her clothes were already folded in her hamper, along with several unfamiliar items that must have been their palace spoils. Kawakami set it down beside Morgana’s table and crossed the room. “You really don’t look so good,” he said, and knelt down beside her. “Do you want some soup or tea?”

“Not sick,” Akane mumbled out, and winced as her leg started cramping again. She reached over for her glasses to make sure it really was him and not some kind of Kawakami-shaped blur. “Overexerted myself. Watch the haft there.”

“A naginata?” Kawakami stepped back to pick it up and prop it against her shelves. “Are you in a club or something?”

“Uh…yeah. Very exclusive club. Thanks for the laundry, _sensei_. Your money should be over on the desk there.”

“I do massages too, you know,” he said. “You’ll be sore in the morning if you sleep all coiled up like that. No extra charge, since you seem too tired to try and make any jokes about it.”

“Fine, fine.” Akane straightened herself out and pulled up her nightshirt to expose her back. “Get on the bed and have your way with me.”

“Don’t say it like that!”

She kept her glasses on to watch him shrug out of his jacket and roll up his shirt sleeves. Too-small outfit or not, she certainly didn’t mind seeing him taking it off. Kawakami bit lightly at one fingertip on his glove and pulled it off in one smooth motion before doing the same with the other one. “Oh, relax. You’ve got _herbivore_ written all over you, I know you wouldn’t try to do anything.”

“You still shouldn’t say things like that so casually, someone with less…charitable intentions might take it as an invitation,” Kawakami said, and hiked one knee onto her bed to push her nightshirt out of his way. Akane shivered at the feel of his fingertips dragging over her bare back, his skin moving against hers. “And as far as your assessment of _me_ —”

He leaned down over her, so close that Akane could feel his breath rolling over her ear as he fastened his hands on her waist. A hot twinge lanced up from between her legs when she heard his voice, deep, taunting, the kind that would get him no end of repeat business if he would only use it more often. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

Her lip would bleed with the way she was rolling it between her teeth, Akane thought. He wouldn’t hear a peep of protest if he tugged her waistband down a bit, or ran his hands too close to the swells of her breasts. But if it was a battle of wills he wanted, then she couldn’t simply give in. She could weaponize her rebel’s heart, after all. “Just get to work, Bryce.”

“As you wish…Mistress.”

Akane didn’t know the names of all the muscles he was hitting or what techniques he was using, and she didn’t care. As long as her soreness kept melting away, he could do whatever he pleased. Her face had to be stuck in some embarrassing expression, but that seemed so starkly unimportant in the moment, while he was undoing the mess the Metaverse had made of her body. “This should be your whole job,” she said through a long moan.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. And I’ve thought about it, but there isn’t nearly as much of a market for masseurs as there is for masseuses. I don’t have any actual certifications, either.”

“Who needs those with raw talent like this…”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Kurusu- _kun_. Should I work on your arms or legs?”

“Please,” Akane said as he pulled her nightshirt back into place, mindful not to touch her inadvertently. “Go ahead and roll my pants up if you need to. I feel like I could just about melt after that.”

Kawakami shifted his position so that he was sitting on the side of her bed and facing away from her before pushing up one pants leg to work on her thigh. “It must be a pretty tough club, if you’re this beat up. Are you sure it’s not too intense?”

“Oh, uh…well, it’s not _gendai budo_ , you know. _Kobudo_. Real old-school stuff, combat forms. Very challenging, but rewarding.”

She would call that half a lie, at most. Even if her teammates might not have picked up on it, her technique _was_ from one of the original schools in Kyoto where she’d trained the year before. Somehow Akane doubted that they would care very much. She closed her eyes and tried to relax under Kawakami’s handling.

“Be careful, all right? You’re young, so it’ll feel like you can bounce back right away, but you could end up doing some permanent damage if you’re getting beaten up like this a lot.”

“Yes, _sensei_. Wait, you’re young too, how would you know?”

“I’m still older than you.”

He moved on to her arms once he was done working on her legs, with her turning over so he didn’t have to lean over or straddle her. Akane couldn’t say she would have minded, but she kept that bit of information to herself and let him work. “So, do you actually have two older brothers, or did your parents just like the name Saburou?” she asked while he was soothing the ligaments in her forearm.

“Both, I guess. Although I’m the only one who got a numbered name. What about you? Any siblings?”

“Older twin brother. Akira. You know the type, good at everything, friends with everyone, golden child, blah blah blah.” Akane rolled her eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“This is practically a vacation from our parents comparing us all the time. They haven’t griped at me once since they shipped me out here. Haven’t called me at all, actually. It’s like they…forgot about me,” she said, her voice cracking. Kawakami drew his hands away while Akane sat up, twisting so her feet were brushing on the floor. Wet heat pricked at the corners of her eyes as she tried and failed to steady her breath. “They forgot about me.”

“I’m sure that’s not what happened,” Kawakami started to say, but his assurances weren’t enough to keep the tears from falling into her lap. Akane slipped her glasses off and buried her face in her hands, unable to keep her composure now that she was relaxed and vulnerable. She did try to keep from sobbing too loudly, but that plan failed too, and she was sure that she would wake up Morgana with her attempts to stifle herself. “Hey, come on…”

“You don’t know what happened, do you?” Akane asked when she had regained some control. Her voice was still unsteady, and her hands shook as she put her glasses back on. Kawakami shook his head. “I took a swing at our dietman. He was drunk and harassing some woman, then fell down before I could actually hit him. I ended up getting put over a barrel anyway…and my father is a bureaucrat for his party, so I probably would’ve been out in the cold even if he hadn’t bought off the judge. They made me disappear for political expedience. Some loyalty, huh—?”

She felt Kawakami’s arms wrap around her and squeeze, pulling her sidelong into an embrace she hadn’t expected. One of his hands settled over her loose hair and stroked softly. Akane was too shocked to react at first, then broke out in another round of sobs as he tightened his hug. “They tossed me aside like I was trash,” she choked out, gripping at his arm.

“You’re not trash, Akane.” She started a little at such a familiar form of address, but with his head resting atop hers, she couldn’t look up at him. He couldn’t see her face go red either, for which she was grateful. “You’re not. And if they can’t recognize that, well, it’s their problem, not yours. You’re not going to disappear, and no one’s going to toss you aside. I’ll make sure of it.”

She wanted to laugh, but only put her arms around Kawakami’s waist instead. He was pleasantly solid, despite being so slender. “Are you sure you want to waste your time with a troublemaker like me, _sensei_?”

“Nothing wasteful about it.”

Akane buried her face in his chest and let him hold her until her tears abated. She wasn’t sure how much time passed, and she didn’t much care—the rude intercession of reality only struck her when he started to pull away. Her hands tightened on his jacket, but she couldn’t hold him in place, and they eased back from one another slowly, reluctantly. She chose to believe the hesitation was mutual. “So, if you’re using my name…can I call you Sabu—”

“No.”

The flatness of his denial stung, and Akane recoiled as he stood up and ran one hand through his hair. “I really shouldn’t have done that, you’re still my student,” Kawakami said. Akane got to her feet, most of her soreness forgotten, and he took another step to preserve the distance between them. Teacher and student—it would keep coming back to that, no matter what.

“What’s wrong with comforting someone? Seems like a nice thing to do, no matter what your relationship is.”

“You don’t get it.” He looked up at her, his butler’s mask gone. Back to being her beaten-down homeroom teacher, stopping to cough into his sleeve with every fifth word. “I’m not a good person, Kurusu- _kun_. I’m actually pretty awful—look at me, carrying on like this with you, taking your money because I’m that hard up for it. I ought to go, it’s late. Feel better.”

 _I’m not a good person_. Akane could do little but watch him descend the stairs and slip out of sight while she mulled over his declaration. The bell over the door downstairs chimed to mark his departure, making Morgana stir in her sleep. Akane trudged after him, relaxed and refreshed with nowhere to go, and closed up the shop. Once the door was locked and the lights were dimmed, she flopped back into her bed, staring up at the ceiling and picking out faces in the wood grain.

 _I’m not a good person_.

“Liar,” she said softly.

⁂

“Are there any verbs in English that _don’t_ conjugate irregularly?”

Akane was ready to snap her pencil in frustration over her summer homework. As if any of this mattered in the grand scheme of things—Medjed had them and the rest of Japan in their crosshairs, and their only real hope of mitigating the damage was a hikikomori younger than they were. Makoto had insisted they take a day off from navigating Souyou’s palace to at least keep up the pretense of normal lives, but what did he know, Akane thought. “There’s a new set of rules for every single one.”

Kawakami looked over from the counter, where he was cleaning out the French press. Their spate of awkwardness after her massage had gone unspoken of in the subsequent days, and by now so much time had passed that Akane would feel odd about dredging it up. Still, despite his apparent mixed feelings over having her as a client, he kept responding to her requests, and she kept paying him. “Oh…that’s your one bad subject, right?”

“You have access to my scores, you know I’m not actually _bad_ at it,” she said in passable English. “It might be my lowest grade, but I’m not that far behind Ryuji. I just don’t like it. Or I don’t like what it means, I guess.”

“I’m glad you’re getting friendly enough with people to use their names like that. But you don’t like what it means?” Kawakami asked.

Akane tapped the pencil’s eraser against her lips. Was she really going to get into this discussion with her teacher…why not, she supposed. It was always possible that he could lend a sympathetic ear. “It’s a required part of our curriculum. But it’s not like the Americans have to learn Japanese in school. Their military doesn’t even make their soldiers learn it before they send them over here to occupy our country,” she said, venom trickling into her voice.

He raised an eyebrow, then nodded to prompt her to go on. “I don’t—I don’t like them here,” Akane said, slumping forward in her seat. “Yes, we threw in with the losing side during the war. We committed atrocities on the mainland and bombed their naval base unprovoked once they stopped selling us fuel. But Germany and Italy didn’t have two of their cities annihilated and weren’t forced to give up their military in perpetuity. We’re not protected by them, we’re yoked to the people who killed hundreds of thousands of our citizens. Innocent people. And it’s not like they were doing it to avenge anyone in Manchuria or Korea. They used us as a stage for their bombs to try and intimidate the Soviet Union.”

She realized she was breathing hard, angrily, the way she did when she argued with her old classmates in Kyoto. Kawakami came around the counter and sat in one of the chairs with a small plate of curry she’d fixed him earlier. “I never took you for one of those repeal-nine types,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m no jingoist. I can’t imagine a proper military looking very different from how the Jietai is now, China would probably cut us down to size if we went off the deep end again. And we still have a lot to answer for, which we _should_ answer for, so that Beijing has less reason to keep blocking our appeals to join the Security Council. But with the train wreck of an election the Americans are staging this year, I don’t think it’s smart to keep our wagon hitched to their star, that’s all. So no, I don’t really get along with the nationalists when I think we should make amends for the war crimes, and their rallies always end up turning into anti-Korean diatribes anyway.”

Kawakami nodded slowly, still working on his curry. “That’s a more nuanced position than I expected,” he said. “I thought it would be more personal, like some soldier’s daughter stole a boy you liked.”

“How petty do you think I am…? The only people I have a personal problem with are the soldiers who harassed my mother so badly at her job in Nijo Castle that she came home in tears. I’m not some kid with a misanthropic streak, you know.”

He coughed under his breath and leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees to steady himself. “I know. But just because you’ve had to grow up quickly doesn’t mean that you’re not a kid. You’re smart, you’re making the best of a bad situation, you apparently have a great part-time job with how much you’re able to request me—but you’re only sixteen. Life’s too short to spend it angry over things you can’t change.”

Akane straightened up and draped one arm over the back of the booth. Maybe she couldn’t change things, and maybe people like that politician who she helped out some nights couldn’t either. But Joker could. The Phantom Thieves could. She didn’t know why she had been saddled with this power, but there was no way she would stand idly by and let her country continue in its death spiral as soon as she had the chance, no matter whose heart she had to steal to do it. “I don’t know, a sufficiently angry person can change things quite a bit.”

His smile was weak, almost condescending. “Yeah, maybe.”

Kawakami was quiet for the rest of the night, going through the tasks Akane had asked for help with one by one until the shop was as nice as it would ever get. Akane set her homework aside as he was putting on his jacket and picking up his umbrella to go back into the rainy night. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about it…you shouldn’t request me anymore,” Kawakami said, smiling in a way that didn’t reach all the way up to his eyes. Akane’s heart sank as she stood, forcing a half-asleep Morgana out of her lap. “This isn’t appropriate, no matter how we dress it up. I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but—you probably have a boyfriend you’d rather be spending your nights with.”

She didn’t rise to that. “Is this because I started ranting about politics?”

“No, nothing like that. You’re every bit as eloquent on the subject as the begrudgingly positive notes Ushimaru- _sensei_ wrote indicate.”

“And the bills you’ve been lying to me about?”

The way his neck flushed before his cheeks, as if the blood was stopping there on its way up, was too cute by far, Akane thought. He smoothed back his hair where whatever product he used was starting to fail. “You shouldn’t accuse people of lying without any proof,” he said, unamused. “And I can get enough work without taking advantage of you, if I can convince my manager to give me more hours—”

His cough sounded worse than usual, like he was about to hack up a lung. Akane reached over the counter and produced a bottle of water for him. “Ah, thank you. Allergies.”

Akane frowned. The day’s pollen count was minimal, to judge by her own allergies. “So, that’s it? I’m back to doing my own chores, just like that? How am I going to get my daily recommended value of guys in too-small suits?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage,” he said, refusing to indulge the ghost of a smile that tugged at the edges of his lips. How Akane wanted to grab him by that tie and pull him down to show him a better use for his mouth than mumbling out untruths, to pay for the rest of the night and drag him upstairs to break the empty cartons her bed was set on, to wake the neighbors and make a sweaty, ruined mess of the both of them.

But she didn’t. Not doing anything she would feel like a pervert for had their sexes been reversed left her painfully restricted, but made it easier to sleep at night. Kawakami opened the front door, flooding the room with the noise of the rain outside. “Good night, Kurusu- _kun_. I’ll see you when the fall semester starts.”

The sickly, coppery taste of blood splashed through her mouth as she bit down on her tongue. He was going to work himself to death and she couldn’t even know why. Akane had half a mind to drag him to the clinic and keep him there until Takemi could give him the third degree about his ridiculous schedule, or beg him to reconsider, or stuff all the money she’d farmed from shadows into his hands so he wouldn’t run himself into the ground—

“Good night, _sensei_.”

She watched him leave, powerless, disappearing into the backstreets of Yongen and out of her life. Akane spat her blood onto the wet pavement and bolted the door before running upstairs, leaping over Morgana, who was still recovering from being dropped. She trailed after Akane as she took her idol poster from the wall and exposed the corkboard underneath. There was his card, taking up the fourteenth slot, still inverted. Tears pricked at her eyes. “No, I was…I was supposed to help him…”

Morgana’s complaints when unheeded as Akane grabbed her purse, ran back down the stairs, and nearly tore the front door’s bolt right through the frame in her haste to get it open. “Mind the shop,” she shouted back to her cat as she took off down the alley, taking the back way to the station while her legs burned with the sudden exertion. Rain beat down on her, soaking through her braid and forcing it undone while her clothes grew damp and clingy. The potted plants sitting out on back porches and hanging over windows rattled with the rumble of the trains. Akane slammed into one wall rather than slow down to turn and clutched at her shoulder as she hurried into the little station, taking the stairs two at a time down to the platform. There were a few people milling about, waiting for transfers or heading into the city center for night shifts, but Kawakami was already gone. The handful of commuters there looked askance at her as she started swearing under her breath, soaked with warm rain, disheveled, shoes almost falling off until she knelt down to fix them. “You stupid martyr,” she muttered, almost ripping off the back of her shoe to fit her heel in. “Why won’t you let me help you?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can go to the tournament with you, send me the details. It’s at the end of the month, isn’t it? Sure, that won’t…what the hell?”

Akane lowered her phone as she walked back into Leblanc, where approximately nothing had been done in preparation for closing. The tables weren’t wiped down, the dishes weren’t washed, and the coffee bean pouches were still strewn about. Sakura was sitting at one of the booths, working a grip trainer with a scowl on his face. “Togo- _han_ , I’ll have to call you back,” Akane said, and cut the line. “Hey, Soji- _san_ , what’s the matter? You look like—well, like I usually do.”

“That damn prosecutor, always carrying on with his threats,” Sakura said under his breath. Akane stiffened. Makoto’s elder brother had a bad habit of putting him in a foul mood, usually over his adopted son’s guardianship.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s full of hot air,” Akane said. “No one would seriously believe that you’re abusing Souyou- _chan_.”

“What do you know about it?”

Akane bit her tongue. She wasn’t supposed to know anything, but sneaking through his palace had yielded more information than the boy himself would probably ever share. “Ach, whatever. Close up, I’m going home. I need a smoke…”

Morgana popped her head out of Akane’s bag once Sakura had left and surveyed the sorry state of the restaurant. “It doesn’t look like he did very much cleaning.”

“It doesn’t look like he did very much _anything_ ,” Akane said, and set her bag down in one chair. “How am I supposed to clean up all this mess?”

She looked at her phone again. It was Friday, Kawakami was working. The two of them together could probably make short work of all the chores she’d been left with, but…he hadn’t sent her any messages about availability since the last time he’d left. She tapped the screen, deliberating. “Watch out, I need to use the pay phone.”

“But didn’t Kawakami- _sensei_ say that you shouldn’t request him anymore?” Morgana asked. Nevertheless, she hopped out of the way while Akane dialed the number on the old rotary.

“Adults tell me a lot of things, I rarely listen…yes, hello, I had a request for the evening, is Bryce available…what do you mean? At all? Uh, no, no one else, thank you. Goodbye.”

The handset dropped back into its cradle, and Morgana tilted her head. “He never showed up for work,” she said absently, and picked up her own phone again. Akane found his mobile number in her contact list and waited as it rang, foot tapping in rapid rhythm against the floor. “Hey, _sensei_ , I—what? Who is…where?”

Her hand was trembling almost too badly to cut the line. “He’s, ah, he’s at Ito Hospital,” Akane said. The words didn’t even sound like they had come from her, more of a distant, clinical whisper that deafened her all the same. Morgana leapt back to the closer chair and pawed at Akane’s arm. “The ward clerk said he collapsed a few hours ago. Exhaustion.”

Akane had to double back when she remembered that she hadn’t locked the door or taken her purse before returning to the station, fighting against the constant kick in her chest to stay calm and hold it together. “Do you even know the way?” Morgana asked, trailing behind her until she stopped at the platform to let her hop into the bag.

“I’ll figure it out.”

⁂

She hated the smell of hospitals, formaldehyde and linens that weren’t washed nearly as often as they should have been. It smelled like death to her. Akane found his room eventually and stood outside, her hand resting on the frame as she debated knocking. They had used the wrong kanji to spell his name on the name card, she saw. At any other time, it might have been funny.

The door swung open without resistance, but Akane still lost her breath. He looked almost…pallid, lying there on bone-white sheets, hooked up to a monitor and an intravenous drip. There was a new, angry purple splotch on his cheek, where he must have hit the ground when he collapsed. His hair was even more of a mess than usual, and he looked to be studying the pattern in the ceiling tiles until he noticed the door being opened. “Kawakami- _sensei_ …”

“Kurusu- _kun_? What are you doing here?”

“I was worried about you, obviously,” Akane said as she took a step forward. She took a chair from the back wall and pulled it up to his bedside. Something in her chest ached to see him in such a sorry state, and she took the chance to grab his hand while he wasn’t in a position to pull away. Perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps she would care later. “That happens when some random nurse answers your phone and says you dropped like a ragdoll in the middle of Shibuya Station.”

“It wasn’t _that_ bad. Just some malnourishment, they told me I’d be fine to leave in the morning.”

Akane reached over and brushed her fingers over the bruise on his cheek. “It looks that bad,” she said softly. Kawakami frowned and stared down into his lap. “Please stop doing this, _sensei_. You’re killing yourself slowly and I can’t stand to keep watching it. I don’t care what kind of bills you have, I’ll pay them. Call it a gift or whatever you like, you never have to put a single yen back in my hand, just…please stop this.”

For a moment, she dared to hope she had gotten through to him. It was going to mean more forays into Mementos to collect the money, but that was a small price for keeping her teacher alive.

“You don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand,” Akane bit back, squeezing down on his hand. “Don’t treat me like a child who has to be shielded from everything.”

Kawakami sighed and closed his eyes. “The money, it’s…an apology, I guess you could say. I worked at another school when I first got out of college, and they stuck me with the problem class because no one else would do it. They weren’t _bad_ , just kids who had gotten a raw deal.”

Akane glanced into the mirror on the opposite wall.

“I still don’t know how I got them on track. Maybe they felt sorry for me, I know a few of them caught me crying in the faculty office once. Whatever I did, the school was happy. But there was one girl—Takase Takako- _kun_ —whose grades never really pulled up. The school board liked the narrative of the freshman teacher turning around the class full of troublemakers, but she didn’t fit into it, so they assigned me to mentor her. Convince her to transfer schools, really, but they couldn’t come out and say that.”

“Trying to pawn her off so she couldn’t tarnish their image,” Akane said.

“I didn’t know that at the time, but yes. So I tutored her. And Takako- _kun_ wasn’t dumb or anything like that, she was actually pretty smart when she was awake enough to function,” Kawakami said. His lips creased into a frown. “She’d been sent to live with some relatives after her parents died, and they had her working a lot of part-time jobs to pay rent and whatnot. Hence sleeping half the time in class—ow!”

“Ah, sorry.” Akane removed her hand and felt her face color as Kawakami shook his wrist out. “These relatives sound like pieces of work.”

Kawakami chuckled humorlessly. “I won’t disagree with you on that. After about a month of me actually tutoring Takako- _kun_ , her grades started to improve, but that was when my bosses made it plain that they were expecting me to get her to transfer. And she told me that she was getting in trouble at home for skipping shifts to stay with me after school for extra lessons. Plus…ugh, you can imagine the rumors,” he said, and Akane had to ride out a sickening wave of guilt in her stomach. “I didn’t want to lose my first job out of college, so I told her that I couldn’t tutor her anymore one day, and the look in her eyes, like I tore her heart out—it killed me a little inside, Kurusu- _kun_. She left, didn’t say a word. I found out the next day that she was hit by a car on the way to one of her jobs in Bunkyo. She didn’t even make it to the hospital.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, and Akane rested her chin on her hands as she looked down at Morgana in her bag. One person running themselves ragged to another. “But that wasn’t your fault,” she said carefully. “How is money—to her guardians, I’m assuming—an apology for something you didn’t do?”

One of the fluorescent lights overhead flickered several times, and Kawakami shook his head. “She wouldn’t have taken that route if she hadn’t been coming from the school. The Takases made all sorts of threats about suing the school and me personally, which would have made a mess of things for everyone, whether or not they lost. I didn’t know any other way to apologize. I still don’t. So I kept paying them, even after I transferred to Shujin. There isn’t really…any price you can put on a human life, is there?”

“There you are!”

Kawakami stiffened at the voice, and somehow shrank further in his bed as a man and woman filed in from the hall, with the same visitor tag that Akane had. She rose to her feet, one hand planted protectively on the bedside. “Oh, Takase- _san_ …what are you doing here?”

“You missed a payment, which is very inconvenient for us,” the man said with another step into the room. Akane’s lips pulled back to show the barest hint of teeth. “Even the school didn’t know where you were when we called them, and some nurse ended up finally answering your phone.”

His eyes widened. “You—you called my school?”

The man crossed his arms in impatience. She should have been used to it by now, but Akane was still taken aback by how…ordinary people like this seemed. Their clothes were a bit tastelessly flashy, but otherwise they wouldn’t even warrant a second glance on the street. Yet here they were, extorting her teacher while he was laid up in the hospital. Evil was so banal sometimes.

“Well, what were we supposed to do?” the woman asked. “Our credit card bill is coming up, after all.”

Kawakami looked down at the needle stuck into the back of his hand. “I’ll have your money tomorrow,” he said miserably.

“Are you crazy? I’ll put you back in the hospital if you give them another yen.”

Their interlopers finally looked over at her, him with contempt and her with pearl-clutching scandal. “Aren’t you vulgar,” Mr. Takase said. “Who is she, exactly?”

“She’s one of my students who heard I was here, don’t mind her. She has a bad habit of speaking without thinking.”

“Another student…you don’t learn, do you?”

“Yes, and what would you know about it?” Mrs. Takase asked with another glance at Akane. “He’s only making amends for taking our dear Takako- _chan_ from us.”

Akane wasn’t aware of taking a step forward, of balling her hand into a fist, of winding her arm back. She saw them recoil without picking out the reason immediately, and only realized it was her when Kawakami grabbed her wrist and held her back. “Don’t,” he said under his breath. “Don’t. I’m sorry about the inconvenience. You’ll have your money.”

“I hope so. You wouldn’t want your current school to have one of their teachers sued for putting all those ideas about college in Takako- _chan_ ’s head, after all.” Mr. Takase turned another glance on Akane, one she assumed was meant to be baleful, and shuffled out with his wife. Akane was still seething after they had vanished from the doorway, with her vision reddening around the edges until a small sound from the bed pulled her attention.

“She always hated when people used _chan_ with her name,” Kawakami said. His voice sounded so diminished. “Said it reminded her too much of her parents.”

“You should have let me hit them.” Akane ran one hand into her hair and pressed down to try and stop the headache she could feel approaching. “You should have let me drag them out to the parking lot—”

“I’m not worth screwing up your probation for.”

She glanced back at him and unclenched her fist by slow degrees. The frustrating part was that she knew he was right. Sating her anger would have only fallen back on him, and then gotten her thrown in jail. Akane shook her head clear. “I’ll decide what you’re worth to me, _sensei_. And it’s more than working yourself half to death for scum like that out of some misplaced sense of guilt.”

“Well, I don’t really have any other options, do I?”

Akane slowly removed her glasses and cleaned the lenses on her blouse. She couldn’t do anything, but Joker had so much more freedom. “What are their given names?”

“Kurusu- _kun_ , please. This isn’t your problem, you’ll only regret getting involved any further. Just go home. Forget about this.”

“And let you kill yourself from overwork? What about your students now? What about _me_?”

“Maybe…” Kawakami rested his head against his pillow with a short, bitter laugh. “Maybe this is what I deserve, for being such a terrible teacher, writing you off and dragging myself through every class with the bare minimum of effort. You should head out, visiting hours are ending soon. Let me rest.”

She wasn’t going to let him see her cry. Akane shoved her tongue to the roof of her mouth as she picked up her purse and smoothed out a bit of his hair, making him start. “Yeah. Rest up.”

The sound of the door falling shut behind her was so heavy, so disturbingly final. Her eyes stung as Morgana poked her head out of the bag. “We’re…we’re going to help him, right?” she asked.

“Of course we are, I’m not going to let him keep doing this to himself. Like he said—it’s easy to do permanent damage, even if he bounces back. I, uh, just have to figure out how.”

“Yeah, we don’t have their given names, or know how to spell their family name,” Morgana said. “Even if their shadows were somewhere in Mementos, and people like that have to be, we wouldn’t be able to find them without that info.”

“And beating them up the old-fashioned way isn’t an option, right?”

“Akane!”

There was no harm in asking. She shoved her hands into her pockets as she passed the ward clerk’s desk where she had signed in—something went off in her head. Akane straightened up again and put on her best respectable expression before going up to the counter. The logbook of visitors was right there on the other side of the desk, in arm’s reach. “Excuse me, I was in such a rush earlier that I think I forgot to sign in,” she said sweetly.

“Oh, no, you signed in, I remember,” the duty nurse said. “You were the one swearing under your breath.”

“Ah, right.” Akane glanced around to make sure there was no one on oxygen around them, then took one of her spare smoke bomb pellets from her pocket. She flicked her thumb against the primer and tossed it down the hall. “My mistake.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Morgana asked, but Akane had no chance to answer before the pellet burst and sent thick, white—harmless—gas billowing out from underneath a cart against the wall with a loud _crack_.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know, get a fire extinguisher!”

The duty nurse scrambled out from behind her desk, leaving her station abandoned as everyone hurried over to the source of the commotion. Akane grabbed the visitor’s logbook and opened to the last few pages, then snapped as many pictures as she could while scanning through the names. “Takase Toshio and Takase Hiromi,” she said with a grin. “Got you.”

Everything was still hectic as Akane turned in her visitor’s badge and walked calmly out of the hospital, scrolling through her phone until she found the contact she wanted. “Suzui- _san_ , it’s Kurusu…yes, I know it’s late, but this is important. Could you put a couple of names up on the site for me right now…great, thanks. I’ll send them once I’m on the train.”

“Are we going into Mementos tomorrow, then?” Morgana asked as Akane dropped her phone down into her purse and retrieved some money for the fare back to Shibuya.

“No, we’re going into Mementos _now_.”

Morgana jostled her purse in surprise as they went into Omote-sando Station. “But—it has to be unanimous! And it’s just the two of us right now!”

“That’ll have to be enough,” Akane said as she took the escalator down to the Ginza line. “You can hang back if it offends you, I’ll walk the whole way and fight their shadows myself. But I’m dealing with these two tonight, so don’t bother trying to talk me out of it.”

Her cat was quiet on the train back to Shibuya, after she had groaned in affront when Akane tossed her phone back into her purse once Suzui had the names. Her thoughts were loud enough to drown out the rumble of the tracks beneath them. The weapons showed up in the Metaverse whether or not she was actually carrying them, which was convenient. And she could fuse a few more personas before she made her way down into the depths. Of course, if Morgana decided not to help her, she would have no one to sense the location of her targets, forcing her to check each nook and cranny of the twisting tracks manually.

Fine, she thought. She could do it herself.

“Come on, give me back my phone,” she muttered as she walked through Shibuya Station. Morgana seemed very intent on blocking her hand for some reason. “You can call me a tyrant later, just—there!”

Akane was able to get it free with a minimum of yowling and scratches on her hand once she emerged out in Station Square, in front of the staircase that served as their entry point. She flitted through her apps to the Metaverse Navigator. “Memen—”

“Going somewhere?” Makoto asked.

She froze in place for a moment, then turned on one heel to see her teammates behind her, in varying states of preparedness for an excursion. Yusuke and Makoto were immaculately dressed as usual, while Ann and Ryuji had obviously thrown jackets on over their nightclothes before rushing out. Makoto nodded toward Akane’s purse. “I think Morgana got a message to us.”

“Traitor,” she whispered. “How did you all get here so fast? What did she manage to tell you?”

Akane went back to her messaging app and looked through their usual group chat. Several messages of garbled nonsense had been sent from her number, followed by confusion from everyone else until Morgana had managed to spell out _Shibuya Station_ with her paws. “Nothing, then. Good, because there’s nothing to tell, I’m doing this on my own. Nothing the Phantom Thieves have to concern themselves with.”

“Really? It doesn’t have anything to do with the post that Suzui- _kun_ put up on the site ten minutes ago?” Makoto asked, and produced his own phone. “Two people named _Takase_?”

She growled and glanced up at the clock on the Teikyu offices. They were wasting time. Akane ushered them out of the way, where they could speak privately. “It’s two people who’ve been blackmailing Kawakami- _sensei_ for years, guilting him into working himself into the ground with side jobs, all right? I just found out an hour ago, and dealing with them quickly was going to be a favor. A little break, because the universe sure hasn’t cut him one.”

“That’s terrible,” Ryuji said quietly. “Is that why he always seems so exhausted and beaten down…? I want to help. He’s my homeroom teacher, too.”

“And he was mine last year,” Makoto said. “If all of that’s true, then you’ve got my vote, even if you weren’t asking for it.”

Yusuke nodded. “I don’t know the man, but I’ve had plenty of good schoolteachers who I would want to help. Blackmail like that is beyond the pale.”

“He’s kind of a dick to me most of the time,” Ann said with a shrug, then started when everyone glared at her. “Let me finish! He might be a dick, but he still doesn’t deserve what these people are doing to him, so I’m in.”

Akane breathed a sigh of relief and led them back to the staircase. “How _did_ you all get here so quickly, anyway?”

“Yusuke and I were shopping in the underground mall,” Makoto said.

Ryuji nodded toward Ann. “We live nearby.”

Morgana poked her head out of the purse as Akane went back to the Navigator. “See? Your friends have your back. Even if we really shouldn’t be heading into the Metaverse this late…”

“Hush,” she said, and gripped her phone harder. “Mementos.”

⁂

Akane couldn’t say she wasn’t disappointed.

Something about the callous way the Takases had shaken down Kawakami in the hospital had led her to believe they would put up a good fight, one that would get her blood roaring and give her a chance to vent her rage. Instead, it was insultingly easy to scramble the Titania and Oberon they became until they were tossing tens of thousands of yen in what they thought were vicious attacks—nothing that would affect their accounts in the real world, but an appropriate bit of comeuppance, in her opinion. When her teammates began to flag, Akane finally cut them down herself, cleanly separating their heads from their bodies with her naginata, and almost pitied the crumpled shadow selves left in their place.

Almost.

She wasn’t interested in listening to whatever they would say to try and justify themselves. Akane grabbed Makoto’s revolver in addition to her own pistol and knocked them both down, kneeling so she could shove one gun under each of their mouths.

“I don’t want to hear you two prevaricate to try and save your own skins,” she said through a snarl, grinding the gun barrels into their necks, “so I’ll be blunt. You’re going to stop extorting my teacher and pay back everything you stole from him, throw yourself at his feet and beg for his forgiveness, and then turn yourselves into the police for child abuse since you don’t deserve it anyway. Otherwise I’ll be back, and I _will_ pull you apart, piece by piece.”

“But—but what about our bills?” Mrs. Takase’s shadow asked.

Akane cocked the hammer of Makoto’s revolver and pushed it further into her throat. “Get a part-time job.”

They dissipated with terror lined into their faces, leaving the usual twinkling light floating in their place. Akane pulled it into being and held it up. “A whip…? Like taskmasters, I guess. Here, you can see if this is any good next time.”

She handed it off to Ryuji to make use of while Morgana popped back into her bus form. Everyone else seemed too taken aback by her viciousness to comment on it, for which she was grateful. Akane returned Makoto’s revolver and headed over to their ride, suddenly exhausted. “And thanks, all of you. This one was important to me.”

⁂

All in all, it had been a productive summer break, Akane thought as she sipped her tea in Leblanc’s empty dining room. Another palace destroyed, another teammate recruited, Suzui’s requests all caught up with, the Phantom Thieves were more famous than ever…and she had even finished her homework and done her laundry for the coming school week.

Those concerns felt rather far off for the time being, though. Morgana was out prowling, her chores were done, and all that was left was to wait, though her nerves weren’t about to make that easy.

Finally, after far too long and far too soon, there was a quick, sharp knock at the door. Akane hopped out of the booth, abandoning her half-done crossword to unlatch the door and throw it open. Kawakami had gone back to one of his regular suits, a blue jacket and slacks with a white-striped yellow shirt, but it was starting to fit better now. The dark bags under his eyes, too, were fading, and more free time had allowed him to bring his hair under some semblance of control without matting it all down. He’d had time to shave away his usual nighttime stubble as well, which was too bad in her view.

“Good evening,” he said with a smile, a real smile, one that creased the corners of his eyes. Akane couldn’t help grinning back, pushing her glasses with her cheeks slightly. “I know it’s late, but would I be able to get a cup of tea and some curry?”

“Well, I guess I could stay open for one more customer.”

She showed him to a counter seat and went in the back to pick out a nice nighttime tea blend. “I’m glad you texted me, I wanted to share the good news with you before school started up again. Do you remember the Takases? From the hospital?”

“I remember,” Akane said, and put the tea kettle on. The curry was just about done, and she set it on two plates to cool. “What about them?”

“Well, they called me the day I was discharged to apologize—I think they were apologizing, it was hard to tell through all the crying—and wired me back a good chunk of the money I had given them over the years with a promise that I would get the rest soon,” he said, and his shoulders seemed to relax even as the words passed his lips. Akane set one plate in front of him. “So I guess that’s…over. I can quit all those other jobs and focus on teaching again. It’s such a relief I still can’t really believe it, what do you think happened?”

Akane shrugged and demurred, ducking away to pour another cup of tea. “Who knows what goes on in a person’s heart? Maybe they were forced to reexamine things when they realized they were blackmailing a guy laying in a hospital bed. Maybe my threating countenance scared them straight. The reasons aren’t that important, what matters is that you can get back to your real career, and that Takako- _han_ ’s memory won’t be perverted like that anymore.”

“Yeah.” Kawakami took the offered cup and sipped the tea, leveling a soft glance at her over the rim. “Be sure to give my thanks to the rest of the Phantom Thieves as well, Kurusu- _kun_.”

Her stomach tied into a hard knot, but she refused to let it show on her face. Instead she simply picked up her own plate and set in on the counter opposite his. “What are you talking about? I’m just keeping my head down until my probation is up. Can’t afford to get into any of that Phantom Thieves business.”

“Come on, I’m not dumb,” he said, and finally tried the curry. “Oh, this _is_ good…but really. That weird laundry you had me do? Your supposed naginata club? Kamoshida- _sensei_ doing an about-face right after she threatened you with expulsion? Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. I can never thank you enough, so I at least owe you that much. Humor me, though—it’s Sakamoto- _kun_ and Suzui- _kun_ , isn’t it?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny any of that, _sensei_. And you should know better than to ask what young ladies do in their private time.” Still, Akane tilted her glasses down and gave him a quick wink before digging into her meal. He chuckled under his breath and did the same.

She found that standing for dinner wasn’t very appealing, and Akane took the seat next to Kawakami at the counter once she had refilled her teacup. They ate quietly, enjoying the companionable silence while it lasted, until their dishes and cups were empty and they both became aware of how close they were sitting. “Classes are resuming in the morning,” Kawakami said. “Business as usual for us. I hope you did all of your summer homework.”

“I did. Even the English.”

“Good, good.” He got up and took both plates over to the sink, even though she hadn’t asked him to wash them and would never have to again. Akane stood as Kawakami flicked his hands dry and came back around the counter, right in front of her. She ran her lower lip between her teeth, and one side of his mouth arched up in a smirk, a tiny bit of Bryce shining through. “You look like you want to ask me something, Kurusu- _kun_.”

“I…well…”

The words started to fail her, crumbling in her throat before she could use them, until she squared her jaw and looked him in the eye. “W-would you like to go upstairs?”

Her ears burned, and the knot her stomach had tied itself into turned to jelly along with the rest of her insides. For a moment, he actually seemed to be considering it, sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her to bed, but then he flashed her a weak smile and shook his head once. “I’m still your teacher, and you’re still my student.”

“That—that’s the best part! I even made my bed so we could mess it up.”

“Oh, Akane- _san_ …your commitment is commendable, if nothing else. I’m happy to come by for your chores, or a massage after one of your, what did you call it, club meets. My nights are free now, after all. And I’ll always support you, however I can. The rest…well.” Saburou took her hand and pressed a light, soft kiss to the backs of her fingers. Akane shivered and failed to keep a whimper from slipping out. When he spoke again, his voice was more confident, protective. Maybe even a bit possessive, if she chose to read into it. She chose to. “I won’t be your teacher forever.”

It was going to be a very long semester, Akane thought. So very long. She took a step closer and, when Saburou didn’t match it with a step back of his own, slowly wrapped her arms around his waist. “Is this all right?” she asked, leaning forward and resting against him. The planes of his chest were solid, as were his arms when he returned her embrace. Akane nestled her cheek in the crook of his shoulder.

“Yeah.” He held her tight. “This is fine.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Oh, that’s right, today’s Valentine’s Day! No wonder there were so many guys bringing their girlfriends in here.”

Akane looked up from the sink and pursed her lips. “You only realized that now? Literally every table today was a party of two. There was a proposal! What, did you think they were just overwhelmed by the atmosphere? I know you’re in here all week, but how do you not know what day it is, Soji- _san_? Is it because all those numbers you say you keep in your phone wouldn’t call you back?”

Sakura glowered at her over his glasses, then scoffed. “I’ve got better things to do now than keep track of holidays. Did you have anything going on today?”

“You’ve had me working since opening, I barely had time to go out for a break at noon,” Akane said with an accusing sweep of her hand over the empty restaurant. She shifted in place to keep her legs from going numb and felt the chocolates from the store on the next street over in her pants pocket. “Or was that an offer? Because I’m not really into guys your age, sorry.”

She relished in the grimace on his face before he turned away to finish wiping down the counter. “Well, you didn’t say anything about having plans, so I figured you were free. Not that you would’ve had a lot of time to make any, I guess. But with how much less prickly you’ve gotten, and all those guy friends you always had over…well, whatever. Maybe things are different now. When I was your age, though—”

“The Ashikaga were still in power when you were my age, Soji- _san_ ,” Akane said with the biggest, cheekiest grin she could muster. His glasses rode up as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Why do I even bother…”

For all the little spars they fell into, he wasn’t so bad, Akane decided. At least he’d been happy to see her at her homecoming the day before with the others. Not that trading barbs with him wasn’t still fun. And even though she and all of her things smelled thoroughly of coffee and curry now, she was going to miss Leblanc when she left, and him.

They both perked up at the sound of the chime over the door disturbing the silence that had settled, and Akane felt her heart thump. Kawakami looked so bashful as he slipped inside, wrapped up in his winter coat with some frost still rolling off his breath. “Ah, good evening.”

Sakura seemed to short-circuit for a moment, not quite making the connection as Akane hung up her apron and went around the counter. “Hey…cleaning ran a little late, as you can see.”

“Kawakami- _sensei_? What’re you—oh. _Oh_.”

All three of them became very interested in the floor, trying to distance themselves from the situation as much as possible. Finally Sakura cleared his throat and fumbled with the knot on the back of his apron before giving up. “I think I’ll leave the rest of it to you,” he said as he came around the counter beside Akane, then added in a low voice, “This is your _welcome back from jail_ gift, got it? I don’t even have the words to describe how much this is not going to happen again.”

“Thanks, Soji- _san_.”

“And be safe, for heaven’s sake. I don’t want to have to explain any baby bumps to your parents—”

“Yeah, I get it! Good night!”

Sakura wasn’t looking for a reason to stick around, but Akane still wanted to nudge him along. He stopped beside Kawakami and mumbled something that made her teacher nod furiously, then hurried out without even bothering to put on his hat or jacket. Morgana, too, got the hint and darted out before the door closed. Small blessings, Akane thought. “Hey,” she said as a grin broke over her face.

“Hey.”

Once the door was shut and it was just the two of them left, they closed the distance by small steps until Akane couldn’t take it anymore and hurried into his arms instead, letting him close around her with a firm, comforting pressure. Any lingering coldness on her skin from the door being open melted in his embrace. “I missed you,” she said into his coat lapel.

“Same here.” The press of his arms around her tightened, and Akane could feel his chin resting atop her head. “I was so worried, and then when I got your message yesterday…it was like a knot came undone.”

“Oh, you’re going to make me blush.” Akane’s hands settled on his back and felt around, a bit more greedily than she intended, making him shift in place around her. “Have you been working out?”

“I have a lot more free time now, thanks to a certain meddlesome thief,” Kawakami said as his grip softened. Akane stepped back and took her time in dragging her hands down his arms until she had her fingers laced up with hers.

“The government says I’m rehabilitated now, thank you very much.”

He dipped down until his lips grazed the edge of her ear. “I know you too well to believe that for a second.”

That butler voice was going to be the death of her, Akane thought. As it was, a few whispered words were enough to make her knees knock and start stripping away the front she always kept up. Her hands tightened around his as she tried to keep from pushing him down right then and there. Instead she contented herself with nodding toward the middle table. “Have a seat, I’ll make some coffee and warm you up. Light cream and sugar, right?”

“I think I could go for a cup of your tea, actually. It always comes out better than when I try to make it,” Kawakami said. He took off his coat, sat at the table, and rested his head in one hand while Akane went back around the counter. “I hope you don’t mind my staring…Mistress.”

“Just prepare for it to be repaid, there weren’t exactly a lot of guys to look at in jail.” Akane put some water on heat, then winked. “Not that I would ever think of anyone else, _sensei_.”

The way he stiffened up at that simply wouldn’t get old, she decided, and Akane leaned over the counter toward him while he glanced back at the door. “Don’t worry, all my friends are out with other plans tonight, no one’s going to come over. I think some of them have a group date thing going on in Shibuya or something, I was a little too high on freedom to pay much attention to what they were saying.”

Kawakami nodded, though he didn’t seem happy at her reassurances. Akane cocked her head as she put the tea leaves into their cups. “I’m sorry we’re stuck sneaking around.”

“Don’t be. I know what I signed up for, I knew this wasn’t going to be like dating a guy my own age,” Akane said. True, it might have been nice to spend the evening with her friends as well, but there would be plenty of time for that. They could have one night for themselves, at least. Akane poured the tea and brought the cups over, nudging Kawakami further into the booth so she could sit next to him. “I hope whatever Soji- _san_ said didn’t frighten you.”

“He said not to hurt you and that he knows where I work. So, the usual protective father stuff.”

Akane nodded slowly and let her tea steep while he chanced a sip. Protective father…that made her smirk. She could have told him back in April that their relationship would end up there and he would have called her crazy. She might have believed him, too. “Yeah, I guess,” she said, and rested her cheek on his shoulder. A shift of her leg reminded her of the chocolate in her pocket, and she dug it out before turning it over in her lap. “I would have made this myself, but…you know, jail and all. Sorry that it’s the same junk you could buy at the store, please just take it and spare my feelings!”

She almost smacked the chocolate down on the table between them, rattling their cups and earning a chuckle from Kawakami. “You could’ve gotten me chocolate-covered raisins for all I care,” he said. One hand reached over, settled on her chin, and gently turned her head toward his. Akane’s heart pounded in her chest as they locked eyes. His lips were so _close_ , with the agonizing space in between him and her smaller than it had ever been, shaped into that rare little smirk that sent a twinge through her belly. “You’re the only gift I need, Akane.”

His lips were softer than she would have thought, if she’d had any space left in her mind for thinking. As it was, the last of her cogency turned to dust under his attentions, under his blazing, scorching warmth. He hadn’t shaved since the morning, either, leaving a light, pleasurable scratch on her chin as they moved in counter. Akane moaned when his hand skirted along her cheek and tangled in her hair, happily parting her lips when she felt his tongue flit against them to let him in. A hard jolt shot up through her chest, costing her what little breath she could scrape together, driving her to grasp at his torso and reach downward until she could wrap her hand around the outline of his cock. He broke away, though, leaving Akane gasping and leaning forward into his jacket while he stroked the nape of her neck. “Well,” Kawakami said softly. “All those taunts and innuendos, but one kiss has you this flustered. What’s the matter, Akane? Don’t tell me that the big bad Phantom Thief was all talk.”

“Come upstairs, Saburou, I’ll show you _talk_ …”

“Now, now.” He pressed another kiss to the top of her head. “Patience is a virtue. Not one you’re overly familiar with, I know, but I do want to have my tea and try some of this chocolate first.”

Akane hoped desperately that whatever he had in store for her was worth making her stew in anticipation, though somehow she didn’t doubt that it would be. Saburou picked up his tea and took a quick, testing sip, then nodded in approval before taking a fuller draught. His free hand moved from his lap to the space in between them, fingers dancing along her pants leg, until she shifted closer and left him making circles on her inner thigh. “Oh, this is nice,” he said, fastening his hand on her leg in between sips of his tea. Akane rolled her lower lip between her teeth. “You’ve really outdone yourself.”

To hell with patience. She grabbed his wrist and tried to bring his hand a little higher, but he managed to move the other way instead and settle on her knee. “Oh, come on.”

“I don’t much feel like being hunted down by an angry restauranteur for ruining one of his booths,” Saburou said, then withdrew his hand to flick at the wrapping on his chocolates.

“Ruining?” Akane swallowed hard as she unwrapped one of the pieces and tried to scrape together some of her pride. “Awfully confident, aren’t you?”

“You’ll know why too, if you play your cards right.”

The spark he’d stirred up in her belly was threatening to grow out of control, not helped by the smirk he was still wearing as he let her pop the chocolate into his mouth. Akane fixed her glasses and downed the rest of her tea in a bid to calm herself, though it didn’t help as much as she hoped. Saburou picked up the remaining chocolate, rolling it between his thumb and first finger, then turned to her. “Say _ahh_.”

“But it’s your chocolate.”

“And I want to share it. Open up, Akane.”

Well, she wasn’t one to turn down sweets. And she had to take back control of this situation, one way or another. Once he had fed her the morsel, Akane grabbed his hand again and held it in place, pushing the chocolate aside to run two of his fingers past her lips. Saburou started and began to pull back, but she wasn’t going to be upstaged that easily. Her tongue went over the length of his fingers as she sucked them clean of any lingering chocolate, grinning at the sight of him finally growing flustered. “You really don’t let yourself get distracted when you want something, huh…”

Akane let his hand go and carefully wiped her lips dry. “I’m not so good at changing course, or so I’ve been told. You’ve had your tea and chocolate—do you want to go upstairs? I won’t even make you clean my room, I promise.”

“That’s so very generous of you, Mistress,” Saburou said, and turned his head to her while his cheek rested on his hands. “Answer me this first: do _you_ want to go upstairs?”

She blinked. “Um…have you not been following? Yes? I’ve been trying to get you in bed since June.”

“Oh, I know that. Believe me, I know. You’re about as subtle as a gunshot. Good money says I just stole your first kiss, so I want you to be sure. You might not be my student anymore, but you’re still seventeen. And we can stop anytime you want, you only have to say so.”

Akane reached out and stroked his cheek, delighting in the rough feeling of the stubble on his skin. “You’re so considerate,” she said, then dropped her cloying smile and shoved her fingers into his hair. Saburou didn’t budge. “But I know what I want, and that’s you, every way I can have you.”

“Well then…lead the way.”

They stood, with him shuffling out of the booth after her, then trailing closely behind her as they slipped to the back of the restaurant and up the stairs. Akane’s heart started to pound in her chest. No backing out now, even if she’d wanted to. But hell, if there was _anyone_ who deserved this, she thought, why not her? One night of pleasure seemed like small recompense for deicide and keeping her country out of the grip of a madman.

Her room still needed some airing out after more than a month of stillness, but she couldn’t be bothered with that now. She pulled the hair tie from the end of her braid and shook out the plaits. “I didn’t think I’d have to almost drag you up here, it’s not like you don’t have a libido,” Akane said as she crossed the room. “Guess you really are an herbivore at heart—”

Saburou’s arms wrapped around her from behind, one across her shoulders and the other at her waist, fingers tightening on her hip. Akane lost her breath and whimpered instead as he pulled her back against his chest and ground the stiff prominence of his cock into her rear. “I remember you calling me that like your life depended on it,” Saburou said, lowering his voice until it was all but rolling over the ridge of her ear, “and every time, I would shrug it off and let you go on believing what you wanted. But I also remember telling you that appearances can be deceiving.”

“Thank heaven for that…”

His hand slid away from her hip and snuck under her sweater and undershirt, racing along bare skin until it reached her bra and worked beneath one cup. Being pinned to him was the only thing keeping her upright as a needful moan cracked out of her throat. One of his fingers circled her nipple, tauntingly out of reach. “Last chance to send me on my merry way,” Saburou said.

“Look, I like that you’re so…aggressively into consent, but I can’t,” Akane began, her voice devolving into a string of curses as he drew his hand away, “I can’t wait anymore. Take me, please…until I can’t think straight. I’ll beg, if that would turn you on.”

“That’s not necessary, but it’s always appreciated. Turn around, Akane.”

He let her go, and when some miracle kept her legs from giving out, she did as she was told, turning in place only for him to catch her chin and pitch her head back to trap her in another kiss. Her glasses skewed when she stood on her toes to keep him from pulling away, but he managed regardless and hooked his fingers under the hem of her sweater. It rolled up and over her head without resistance, as did her undershirt. Suddenly Akane remembered the scars on her torso from her interrogation, and crossed her arms in front of her chest while Saburou reached back to unclasp her bra. “Being a phantom thief is risky work, isn’t it?” he asked in a low, gentle voice, dragging his fingers over the scarring around her left shoulder.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Akane moved her arms so he could slide her bra away and closed her eyes. “I know they’re ugly, sorry.”

“There’s nothing ugly about you.”

Saburou swept down on her, pressing kisses first to her neck, then her collarbone, then along her shoulder and down her arm until he arrived at the backs of her fingers. He fixed her with a piercing stare that almost overwhelmed her with its intensity. “Nothing at all. I won’t hear that kind of talk, understand?”

All Akane could do was nod. Saburou set her down on the edge of the bed and shrugged off his jacket, moving with slow, deliberate motions to give her a bit of a show. Once her glasses were fixed, Akane sat at rapt attention to gorge herself on the eye candy, rocking with anticipation as he loosened his tie and undid the buttons on his shirt one by one. Her lip was ready to bleed with the way she was rolling it between her teeth, and she almost bit straight through when it all fell away and she could finally get a view of him without a shirt. Saburou stepped up to her and shivered when Akane took the chance to run her hand over the soft brown hair covering his chest and stomach. “Fuck…”

“That’s the idea,” he said, settling one finger under her chin again. “Lie back for me and we’ll get these jeans out of the way before you burn right through them. Hope you don’t mind having to wash these sheets later.”

“You certainly have a high opinion of your own skill,” Akane mumbled, popping her hips up to let him tug her pants down her legs.

“And I’m about to show you why.”

She let out a happy _yelp_ when he slipped her jeans off in one fluid motion and tossed them aside, leaving her in nothing but her panties. The cold of the room clashed with the heat burning in her and the scorch left by his hands as they raced back up her legs and paused on her hips, squeezing, before slipping under her and pulling her up off the bed. Akane’s eyes widened at the sudden need to balance herself, but she fell forward into Saburou’s chest easily enough, twining her legs around his waist as soon as she could. She whimpered at the feeling of his cock pressing between her legs until he seized her in another claiming, bruising kiss. He seemed as out of breath as her for once when they broke for air, with the rises and falls of his chest pushing against hers. Saburou nipped at one ear and tightened his hold on her, pulling them as close as could be with fabric still the in the way.

“Tell me what you want,” he said, whispering the words across her skin. Akane shivered despite the warmth still threatening to burn her up.

“Come on…”

“Say it,” Saburou repeated in barely more than a growl, pushing his hips toward hers and making her mind go blank. “I want to hear you say it, Akane.”

Her nails raked across the firm planes of his back. Akane tried to respond, but found her throat curiously dry. “Please…use your mouth,” she mumbled. “Please.”

“Where? Here?” he asked, and kissed the soft spot in the crook of her shoulder. Akane shook her head, and Saburou hiked her up further. “Maybe here?”

His mouth closed around one nipple, forcing a moan out of her as his teeth closed around her and his tongue went flitting from side to side. Akane’s nails scratched deeper into his skin. “Getting warmer…fuck’s sake, Saburou, between my legs…”

“All you had to do was ask.”

He set her down gently on the bed and climbed on after her, pushing one of her legs aside as if he were doing nothing more than shuffling some papers around. Saburou dipped down and trailed quick kisses downward from her breasts to her stomach, into the trimmed little line of hair in front of her legs, and finally settling on her sex, his tongue lashing teasingly across her clit. Akane whimpered. Her hand wound into his hair and held tight. “Fuck, fucking, fuck…”

“So eloquent,” Saburou said before Akane pulled him back into place. Little droplets of sweat beaded up on her stomach as long, aching jolts lanced through her, pleasure on top of pleasure, giving her no time to collect herself in between. The occasional hungry looks from him weren’t exactly helping her keep her composure, either.

“Right there, just like that,” she gasped out, arching her back and grinding her hips up toward Saburou’s mouth. “I take back all my snark, you know what you’re doing…!”

His hands tightened on her thighs as he scoffed, tracing out lines and shapes she had no name for on her body. Every change of direction was a heady spike of pleasure, piling on and on as her body continued to burn up. The arch in her back reached its highest point, and an inelegant whimper broke out of her as she exploded.

Her neighbors would just have to deal with the noise as she came, quivering from head to toe and making no secret of her enjoyment. Akane rocked her hips, pushing down on Saburou, until he eased back with a little smirk. He discreetly wiped his mouth clean and climbed forward on the bed until he was right over her. “Why do you look so pleased with yourself?” Akane asked through short breaths.

“Because,” he said with one hand settling on her breast, his thumb flicking over her nipple, “I’ve wanted to do that for a while, too. Still doing all right?”

“Um…don’t hate me.”

Saburou drew his hand back and sat up so he could sit perpendicular to her on the bed. He smiled. “How could I hate you, Akane? I said that if you wanted to stop, we’d stop.”

“No, it’s not that, I’ve got a little cramp around here from the way I was locked up there.” Akane sat up and reached back to pat below her ribs, then shuffled closer so he could put one arm around her and work on her back a bit. “Don’t worry, I still want you to make me forget my own name.”

“Duly noted,” he said, and kissed her again. Akane closed her eyes and traced his chest, dragging her nails down toward his waistband. He helped her undo his belt without breaking away for air and pushed himself up with one hand, allowing Akane to work his pants and boxers down his legs and let him kick them away as they parted. She wound her hand back up his leg and felt him suck in a breath just as she lost hers and wrapped her fingers around his cock. It was warmer than the rest of him, stiff and trembling softly in her hand. His head bumped into the glass of her window as it pitched back. “Fuck…”

“Who’s got the filthy mouth now?” Akane asked with a grin, and bit her tongue as she looked down. The light, short up-and-down rhythm of her hand seemed to be getting a good reaction, thankfully. Saburou hissed through his teeth and slid his hand from her back to the swell of her ass. “Hey, I’ve never done this before, so…I know not to bite or wrench or anything, but tell me what feels good, all right?”

He nodded and kissed her cheek. “You’re doing fine, you can go a little faster.” Akane picked up her pace and listened to the broken little way his voice cracked out of him. The muscles in his thighs began to tense. “Do you—ah, do you want to try using your mouth?”

“Do _you_ want me to try?” Akane asked, running her thumb over the bottom of his head and swiping away a small bead of arousal. She stuck her tongue out to taste it, but found that it didn’t taste much like anything. A bit salty, maybe. Saburou watched her lick her thumb clean, color rising in his cheeks. “Seems like you do.”

“You’re a master of puzzling out the truth.”

Akane rolled her eyes and shifted back to get down on all fours. Saburou ran his fingers through her hair and drew it up so it would stay out of her way, then moaned as her tongue went sliding over the tip of his cock. His hips canted, but he kept from thrusting them up toward her mouth. Akane parted her lips and started to take him in, found she rather liked the taste and texture, and opened her mouth further to sink down on him. “Good girl,” Saburou said in a tight, strained voice. “Very good girl. Don’t try to take it all, the end’s what you want to focus on anyway.”

She knew she had asked him to tell her what he liked, but Akane still found herself tickled that he couldn’t turn off the teacher in him. Still, short of biting him, _everything_ seemed to get a good response. Akane did dip down as far as she could twice, just to see how much of him she could take, then drew back slightly to work on the head while pumping the rest of him with her hand. Saburou’s fingers tightened up in her hair, and his hips started to buck despite his attempts to keep still. The warmth from him was beyond what she had imagined, and he seemed ready to burn up under her ministrations until he tapped the back of her head. “You’re doing great, but this isn’t porn, I can’t go twice in a few minutes,” Saburou said, almost panting. “There’ll be a good hour’s wait, if you keep going like that…”

“Well, I can’t let you have all the fun.”

His wince as she sat back up was perversely rewarding, and Akane took his distraction as an opportunity to clamp her teeth down on his collarbone. Saburou started, then paid her back in kind, dipping down and biting into the crook of her shoulder. The head rush was almost unbearable as the sting of pain sank deeper. They were marking one another, they belonged to each other, she was his, all his, and he was hers. One last quick jolt of pain broke the blood vessels, and Akane moaned as they sat up straight and she could admire the teeth marks she’d left on him. “Somehow I knew you were a biter,” he said, and Akane replied with a playful chomp of her teeth. “I’ll get a condom, then?”

“Yeah, I have no idea where I am in my cycle, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for wanting to be safe. You’re way too young to be a mom, anyway.”

A pleasant little stir below her stomach at that accompanied Akane as she shuffled back to the end of the bed while Saburou stood up and reached down to take a condom from his pants pocket. Akane traced a slow circle over her abdomen. “Someone came prepared. Were you planning on doing these lewd things with one of your students, _sensei_ …?”

“Oh, that’s the great thing about you, Akane.” Saburou tossed the empty foil away and slipped back into bed, easing her legs apart so he could stop right above her. The tip of his cock pressed at her and she whined, reflexively rolling her hips upward to try and draw him in. He kissed her fiercely, almost biting her lower lip before pulling back. “You’re not my student anymore.”

His first press into her was a shock to her system, a scorching stretch as her body struggled to accommodate him. Akane grabbed his shoulders and tried to relax, but she couldn’t help the discomfort that flashed across her face. Saburou stopped and stroked some hair out of her face. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“It’s not really _pain_ , don’t pull out,” Akane said, struggling for the words and her breath. “More like—using new muscles? It feels weird, but good at the same time, don’t stop…”

He nodded and pushed a little further, igniting an exquisite burn throughout her body that didn’t stop until Saburou was buried up to the hilt and her virginity was well and truly gone. Akane raked her nails across his back and pushed her feet deeper into the bedsheets. “Damn…how’re you doing? Do you want another minute to adjust?”

“Yes, please? It feels like—ah, like I’m about to split in two, let me get used to it.”

Saburou smiled. “Of course,” he said, and kissed her softly while one hand slipped between them and charted a slow circle around her clit. The pleasure started edging out everything else, and Akane tapped a line into his back to get his attention. “Hmm?”

“What happened to all that talk before? Here you are being all gentle and sweet, not that I don’t like it, but it made me wonder. Um, you can start moving, if you like.”

“It’s—” Saburou rolled his hips back, leaving an aching absence until he thrusted forward again and made Akane mewl— “it’s your first time, you don’t want to lead with the crazy stuff. And don’t be so quick to discount gentle and sweet, sometimes it’s all you could want.”

His fingers kept up a teasing pattern around her clit, and Akane pushed herself down the bed to try and get a better angle. She could feel his heart through the back of his chest, beating madly as she was sure her own was doing, and the occasional muscle tremor from keeping himself balanced on one elbow. “Crazy stuff? Do tell,” Akane said, timing her words with the little breaths that were escaping on each thrust.

“You’re incorrigible, do you know that?”

Nonetheless, Saburou dipped down until Akane could feel his lips ghosting across her ear. His thrusts changed to slow, full movements, withdrawing almost completely before pushing back into her. “But if you’re that curious…I would’ve had you over my knee already, making sure you couldn’t sit down for a week without wincing,” he said, dropping his voice into his old butler routine while his hand kept ravishing her. Akane’s stomach flipped. “I wouldn’t have bothered with the condom either, not when I could have your hands tied behind your back and your face shoved into your pillow as I fucked you from behind. I’d just pull out and make a mess of your back, or roll the dice on knocking you up—”

Akane clamped down on him so firmly that she feared for a moment that she’d actually hurt him. His finger twitched at the right angle over her clit, and the combination of the stimulation and having a kink sussed out was enough to make her bite down on his shoulder again to keep from screaming beside his ear. His pace picked up in response to her movements, settling at a feverish pitch that he could only sustain for a minute before thrusting back into her with one strangled note and remaining there as she pressed down around him. “Fuck,” he whispered, spent and panting. “That gets you going, huh? The pregnancy thing?”

All she could do was nod and make a small affirmative sound. Saburou chuckled under his breath and kissed her cheek. “Well, we’ve all got our weaknesses. I’m going to pull back now, all right? I’m told it can sting a little.”

Another nod. It wasn’t a sting when he pulled out, more an uncomfortable sense of emptiness, like a part of her she never knew she had was suddenly gone. The gnawing began diminishing quickly, though, as Akane rubbed a slow circle around her abdomen and Saburou collapsed on his back next to her. The head rush from her second orgasm was still going strong, and she curled into his side as he discreetly did away with the condom before wrapping one arm around her. “Everything still good?” Saburou asked. “Not sore?”

“Only the good kind.” The words felt soft in her mouth, and Akane could hear herself slipping back into her native accent. She pressed the tips of her fingers together a few times. “Awkward question, though?”

“Shoot.”

“Have you ever…done that before?” she asked. “With another student, I mean. Just because you did everything so well, what with it being my first time and all.”

“No, no.” Saburou rubbed up and down her back. “I have some experience in this field, I guess you could say. The girls I dated when I was in college were both virgins.”

“But you weren’t?”

He shrugged, moving her head slightly along with his shoulder. “In my defense, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do on Sado, my friends and I weren’t running around stealing hearts in high school. Mystery solved?”

“Yeah,” Akane said, curling up tighter to him. The physical burn that had threatened to consume her yielded to something softer, no less intense in its strength, but focused outwardly, away from mere sensation. Her voice was unsure, but she knew that she had to get it out. “Would it be trite to say _I love you_ right after all that?”

Akane felt him stiffen around her, then relax as he held her closer. “Sometimes I forget how direct you are. No, it wouldn’t be trite. Not if you mean it.”

“Then…I love you.”

Saburou leaned forward and kissed the crown of her head. “I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading! If you liked this, you may be interested in some of my other _Persona_ work:
> 
> [A Portrait of the Shogi Player as a Young Woman](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805870) – Yusuke and Hifumi’s Valentine’s date.
> 
> [Empress’s Justice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15770388) – Haru goes back and finds a fatally wounded Akechi in Shido’s palace.
> 
> [Fool’s Judgment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14370858/chapters/33177117) – The lead-up to, and aftermath of, Sae’s palace if she and Joker were dating.
> 
> [High Priestess, pǝʇɹǝʌuI](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16708519/chapters/39187396) – Genderswapped (sort of) High Priestess confidant, featuring my rabid little honey badger of a female protagonist, Akane
> 
> [I Guess This Sort of Thing Really Does Happen…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11855355) – Sae stashes Joker at Kawakami’s place following the interrogation.
> 
> [Kintsukuroi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14760477/chapters/34131807) – Some scenes from a setting where Sae and Yusuke are an item.
> 
> [Our Last Private Moments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092479) (Persona 3) – Theo and his guest's last date.
> 
> [Sense Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536104) – Yusuke, whose world comes to him in impressionistic bursts and flashes, wonders if he's good enough at all to be part of the Phantom Thieves. Shukita.
> 
> [Singles’ Retreat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556390) – Rather than tag along with any of their friends in relationships, Haru rents out a ryokan for herself, Ryuji and Yusuke for a week. What ever shall they do to keep themselves busy? (Yusuke/Haru/Ryuji, incredibly NSFW)
> 
> [Weekends in Shibuya](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697408) – A little future Sae/Joker piece I did for a friend when they were sick.


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